Bitter Orange
Claire Fuller
(Author)
21,000+ Reviews
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Description
From the attic of Lyntons, a dilapidated English country mansion, Frances Jellico sees them--Cara first: dark and beautiful, then Peter: striking and serious. The couple is spending the summer of 1969 in the rooms below hers while Frances is researching the architecture in the surrounding gardens. But she's distracted. Beneath a floorboard in her bathroom, she finds a peephole that gives her access to her neighbors' private lives. To Frances's surprise, Cara and Peter are keen to get to know her. It is the first occasion she has had anybody to call a friend, and before long they are spending every day together: eating lavish dinners, drinking bottle after bottle of wine, and smoking cigarettes until the ash piles up on the crumbling furniture. Frances is dazzled. But as the hot summer rolls lazily on, it becomes clear that not everything is right between Cara and Peter. The stories that Cara tells don't quite add up, and as Frances becomes increasingly entangled in the lives of the glamorous, hedonistic couple, the boundaries between truth and lies, right and wrong, begin to blur. Amid the decadence, a small crime brings on a bigger one: a crime so terrible that it will brand their lives forever.
Product Details
Price
$25.95
$24.13
Publisher
Tin House Books
Publish Date
October 09, 2018
Pages
320
Dimensions
5.4 X 8.6 X 1.2 inches | 1.1 pounds
Language
English
Type
Hardcover
EAN/UPC
9781947793156
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About the Author
Claire Fuller is the author of Our Endless Numbered Days, which won the Desmond Elliott Prize; Swimming Lessons; Bitter Orange; and Unsettled Ground, which won the Costa Novel Award and was a finalist for the Women's Prize for Fiction. She has an MA in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Winchester and lives in Hampshire with her husband.
www.clairefuller.co.uk
Reviews
Claire Fuller is such an elegant writer and this book is incredibly atmospheric, vivid, and intriguing. I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn't reading a forgotten classic.--Emma Healey, author of ELIZABETH IS MISSING
English mansion? Check. Dazzling couple? Check. Yearning outsider? Now you have all the ingredients for a psychological powder keg, ready to explode during the summer of '69.--Elle, Most Anticipated Books of Fall
Fuller is a master of the quietly eerie; she's excellent at creating an aura of pervasive dread--and sustaining it till the very last page.--NYLON, Best Books of Fall
Cannily releasing clues on the way to an explosive finale, Fuller moves fluidly between the time of the story and a period 20 years later . . . The lush setting and remarkable characters make for an immersive mystery.--Publishers Weekly
A rich, dark pressure cooker of a novel that simmers with slow heat and suppressed tension.--Ruth Ware, New York Times bestselling author of THE WOMAN IN CABIN 10
Page by page, Fuller enchants us with prose as thick as clotted cream, only for us to realize too late that she's been ensnaring us at every turn.--The Paris Review
Fuller, a skilled stylist, is very good at letting you know Frances by degrees and at describing a setting in which the ordinary rules of life feel suspended . . . You can taste the wine, smell the musty fabrics and the overripe fruit, hear the hum of lazy insects and track the teasing suggesting that something will go terribly wrong.--The New York Times Book Review
Fuller's writing is seductive, brooding, twisty--it unsettles you quietly, slowly.--Goop, "Books That Will Make You Want to Start a Book Club"
Lovely and lush prose that only adds to the sense of dread pervading the novel . . . Bitter Orange is an absorbing exploration of the many lies we tell to others--and to ourselves.--Vulture, Best Crime Books of the Year
Bitter Orange twists and bends, arouses and agitates, like a seductive nightmare. . . . With sensations so alive on the page, you're constantly kept on your toes, attuned to the mania. You'll ask, beguiled: What's really going on here?--Entertainment Weekly
--Gabriel Tallent, New York Times bestselling author of MY ABSOLUTE DARLING
English mansion? Check. Dazzling couple? Check. Yearning outsider? Now you have all the ingredients for a psychological powder keg, ready to explode during the summer of '69.--Elle, Most Anticipated Books of Fall
Fuller is a master of the quietly eerie; she's excellent at creating an aura of pervasive dread--and sustaining it till the very last page.--NYLON, Best Books of Fall
Cannily releasing clues on the way to an explosive finale, Fuller moves fluidly between the time of the story and a period 20 years later . . . The lush setting and remarkable characters make for an immersive mystery.--Publishers Weekly
A rich, dark pressure cooker of a novel that simmers with slow heat and suppressed tension.--Ruth Ware, New York Times bestselling author of THE WOMAN IN CABIN 10
Page by page, Fuller enchants us with prose as thick as clotted cream, only for us to realize too late that she's been ensnaring us at every turn.--The Paris Review
Fuller, a skilled stylist, is very good at letting you know Frances by degrees and at describing a setting in which the ordinary rules of life feel suspended . . . You can taste the wine, smell the musty fabrics and the overripe fruit, hear the hum of lazy insects and track the teasing suggesting that something will go terribly wrong.--The New York Times Book Review
Fuller's writing is seductive, brooding, twisty--it unsettles you quietly, slowly.--Goop, "Books That Will Make You Want to Start a Book Club"
Lovely and lush prose that only adds to the sense of dread pervading the novel . . . Bitter Orange is an absorbing exploration of the many lies we tell to others--and to ourselves.--Vulture, Best Crime Books of the Year
Bitter Orange twists and bends, arouses and agitates, like a seductive nightmare. . . . With sensations so alive on the page, you're constantly kept on your toes, attuned to the mania. You'll ask, beguiled: What's really going on here?--Entertainment Weekly
--Gabriel Tallent, New York Times bestselling author of MY ABSOLUTE DARLING
