The Lie of the Land, Amanda Craig
The Lie of the Land, Amanda Craig
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The Lie of the Land
‘A very good read indeed' Matt Haig

Author: Amanda Craig

Narrator: Emma Powell

Unabridged: 13 hr 36 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/01/2018

Synopsis

'A very good read indeed' MATT HAIG

'Terrific, page-turning, slyly funny' INDIA KNIGHT

'As satisfying a novel as I have read in years' SARAH PERRY

'One of the most brilliant and entertaining novelists' ALISON LURIE

Quentin and Lottie Bredin, like many modern couples, can't afford to divorce. Having lost their jobs in the recession, they can't afford to go on living in London; instead, they must downsize and move their three children to a house in a remote part of Devon. Arrogant and adulterous, Quentin can't understand why Lottie is so angry; devastated and humiliated, Lottie feels herself to have been intolerably wounded.

Mud, mice and quarrels are one thing - but why is their rent so low? What is the mystery surrounding their unappealing new home? The beauty of the landscape is ravishing, yet it conceals a dark side involving poverty, revenge, abuse and violence which will rise up to threaten them.

Sally Verity, happily married but unhappily childless knows a different side to country life, as both a Health Visitor and a sheep farmer's wife; and when Lottie's innocent teenage son Xan gets a zero-hours contract at a local pie factory, he sees yet another. At the end of their year, the lives of all will be changed for ever.

A suspenseful black comedy, this is a rich, compassionate and enthralling novel in its depiction of the English countryside, and the potentially lethal interplay between money and marriage.

A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, TELEGRAPH, NEW STATESMAN, EVENING STANDARD, SUNDAY TIMES AND IRISH TIMES

About Amanda Craig

Amanda Craig is a British novelist, short-story writer and critic. After a brief time in advertising and PR, she became a journalist for newspapers such as the Sunday Times, Observer, Daily Telegraph and Independent, winning both the Young Journalist of the Year and the Catherine Pakenham Award. She was the children's critic for the Independent on Sunday and The Times. She still reviews children's books for the New Statesman, and literary fiction for the Observer, but is mostly a full-time novelist. Her novel Hearts and Minds was longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and The Lie of the Land was chosen as book of the year by the Guardian, Observer, Telegraph, New Statesman, Evening Standard, Sunday Times and Irish Times.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer

Waking with fortitude, living with compromise and sleeping with stress is normal for an architect in Britain. Even during the best of times, Lottie has spent weeks drawing up plans for prospects over which clients have then backtracked, changed their minds and cancelled. Experience has taught her......more

Goodreads review by Lady R

Whaaaaat?!!! Seriously what just happened.... I HATE it when authors/editors do that. This was a seriously good read - a voice that was very fresh and original dealing sensitively (whilst at the same time being a page-turner) with family relationships, love, marriage & modern-day Britain. It was defin......more

Quotes

There is much to relish here. The sharp characters, the smooth grown-up prose, the irony, and the ability to weave warmth and dark honesty like few other novelists can. A very good read indeed

Terrific, page-turning, slyly funny Sunday Times

Amanda Craig's new novel delivers wit, mysteries and a dark commentary on the differences between life in the London bubble and the rest of the country Daily Mail

Absolutely magnificent state of the nation novel . . . very funny, very painful. If a man like John Lanchester had written this they'd be calling it a searing indictment of contemporary Britain

A gripping, compassionate and often funny take on a cross-section of Britain that fiction tends to overlook. In the end, it is good to get out of London Sunday Times

Funny, compassionate and psychologically probing Bernardine Evaristo

Craig's humour is truthful and easygoing, and she's even-handed to both the weird Devonians and xrass urban "incomers". Just as in Cold Comfort Farm, there is something nasty in the woodshed Vogue

As satisfying a novel as I have read in years. It is a wickedly observant comedy of manners, very alert to the way we live now, but somehow never cruel or judgmental Guardian

Amanda Craig is one of the most brilliant and entertaining novelists now working in Britain and her range of sympathy and humor and understanding of the Way We Live Now are deeply impressive Alison Lurie

Witty, vicious, dark and unsettling, it's a book that has finally propelled Craig to her rightful place at the top table of contemporary novelists Observer

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