Shortlisted for the 2021 Costa Novel Award
In this powerful, highly anticipated novel from an award-winning
author, four people attempt to make a home in the midst of environmental
disaster.
Perched on a sloping hill, set away from a small town by the sea, the
High House has a tide pool and a mill, a vegetable garden, and, most
importantly, a barn full of supplies. Caro, Pauly, Sally, and Grandy are
safe, so far, from the rising water that threatens to destroy the town
and that has, perhaps, already destroyed everything else. But for how
long?
Caro and her younger half-brother, Pauly, arrive at the High House after
her father and stepmother fall victim to a faraway climate disaster--but
not before they call and urge Caro to leave London. In their new home, a
converted summer house cared for by Grandy and his granddaughter, Sally,
the two pairs learn to live together. Yet there are limits to their
safety, limits to the supplies, limits to what Grandy--the former
village caretaker, a man who knows how to do everything--can teach them
as his health fails.
A searing novel that takes on parenthood, sacrifice, love, and survival
under the threat of extinction, The High House is a stunning,
emotionally precise novel about what can be salvaged at the end of the
world.
