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The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Idle Grounds
Reader Score
68%
68% of readers
recommend this book
"A chilling exploration of privilege, memory, and the unsettling weight of inherited history." --Oprah Daily In this thrilling New England gothic set in the late 1980s, a group of young cousins wander deep into the woods on their family's property, drawn in by uncanny visions and the disappearance of one of their own--finding that the farther they go, the stranger their surroundings become. As always with these things it started with a birthday party. Lingering at the edge of a family party, a troop of cousins loses track of the youngest child among them. With their parents preoccupied with bickering about decades-old crises, the children decide they must set out to investigate themselves--to the rickety chicken coop, the barn and its two troublesome horses, and into the woods that once comprised their late grandmother's property. The more the children search, and the deeper they walk, the more threatening the woods become and the more lost they are, caught between their aunt's home in the present day, their parents' childhood home just through the trees, and the memory of the house their grandmother grew up in. Soon, what began as a quest for answers gives way to a journey that undermines everything they've been told about who they are, where they came from, and what they deserve. "Unsettling and sharply funny" (The Guardian), Idle Grounds is a rich exploration of the interior lives of children and a gripping meditation on birthright, decline, and the weight of family history. A fable of the distortions of privilege and the impossibility of keeping secrets hidden, this is a novel about straying from home--only to come back unraveled, unsettled, and irrevocably changed.
Book Details
- Publisher: Scribner Book Company
- Publish Date: Feb 11st, 2025
- Pages: 208
- Language: English
- Edition: undefined - undefined
- Dimensions: 8.40in - 5.80in - 0.90in - 0.65lb
- EAN: 9781668070451
- Categories: • Literary• Family Life - General• Thrillers - Suspense
About the Author
Bamford, Krystelle: - Krystelle Bamford's work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, bath magg, Under the Radar, The Scores, and numerous anthologies including the Best New British and Irish Poets 2019-2021. She is a 2019 Primers poet and was awarded a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award. Raised in the US, she now lives in Edinburgh with her partner and children. Idle Grounds is her first novel.
Praise for this book
"A literary journey rich with magical realism, beautiful and eerie all at once...Idle Grounds is a gorgeous first offering by an author with prodigious skill." --Booklist
"Arch and haunting...in barbed, poetic prose, Bamford captures the cousins' uneasy communal existence. It's a fresh spin on the well-worn trope of a family with secrets." --Publishers Weekly
"Magical, perplexing and funny in a wholly original way." --Rachel Yoder, author of Nightbitch "To read Krystelle Bamford's astonishing debut is to be perpetually conflicted, like the child cousins it follows, between tearing at breakneck speed through the forest of its gorgeous pages to find out what will happen next, and deliberating with delirious languor, stopping to pick up, turn over, and marvel at each wryly glorious description, each exquisite joke. Idle Grounds left me like a kid with a dreadful yet delicious secret who tells everyone, I know something you don't know!--but I can't tell; you'll have to find out for yourself." --Rachel Lyon, author of Fruit of the Dead "I knew I would like Idle Grounds very much, and it was doubly pleasant to realize I was right. Bamford writes from the shared consciousness of the junior branch of an entire family, and it felt as unnerving and delightful as when an eight-year-old takes you into their confidence for five minutes, in order to unload their pet likes and dislikes onto you...Reading this book expanded my memory and powers of retrieval and recall." --Daniel Lavery, author of Women's Hotel "Unsettling, puckish, and brilliantly written, this novel is an absolute one-off. I loved it." --Claire Fuller, author of Bitter Orange "Deviously subtle and intoxicatingly sinister, Idle Grounds conjures up a new language of nightmare symbolism to fill the reader's heart with dread. A deservedly assured debut!" --Leon Craig, author of Parallel Hells "An acid trip of a novel. Weird, sinister and darkly funny. I can't wait to see what Bamford does nex.t" --Amy Twigg, author of Spoilt Creatures "Every sentence positively bristles with unease. One of the most atmospheric novels I have read in a long time. Beautifully written." --Jennie Godfrey, author of The List of Suspicious Things