Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy (Canongate, £9.99)
The award-winning Australian writer’s third adult novel begins with a lone woman, Rowan, washed up on a remote island between Tasmania and Antarctica. Shearwater is a research outpost, home to the global seed vault created as a bulwark against climate catastrophe and to colonies of seals, penguins and birds. For eight years, Dominic Salt and his children have lived there, but dangerously rising sea levels mean that they, and the vault, will shortly be evacuated. Dominic cannot understand why Rowan has ended up on Shearwater, and Rowan is mystified by the absence of the scientists and researchers, about whom the family are tight-lipped – and the island’s communication centre has been mysteriously sabotaged, isolating them still further. McConaghy writes beautifully about the natural world and expertly ratchets up the tension, as mutual suspicion increases and secrets are gradually revealed. This is a powerful read that encompasses not only grief, sacrifice and perseverance in the face of disaster, but also survival strategies and their concomitant moral dilemmas.
Darkrooms by Rebecca Hannigan (Sphere, £20)
When chaotic kleptomaniac Caitlin returns to her small Irish home town after the death of Kathleen, the mother from whom she has been estranged for many years, she’s pleased to be welcomed by the Branaghs, friendly neighbours she remembers from childhood. Less pleasant is being forced to confront past traumas, including the disappearance of her nine-year-old friend Roisin from a local wood 20 years earlier. Caitlin feels guilty about this, as does Roisin’s older sister Deedee, who is sure that Caitlin is still hiding something. Having joined the garda to find answers that never materialised, Deedee is drinking heavily, making poor decisions and jeopardising both her job and her relationship, and both women desperately need closure … This impressive, if bleak, debut is a slow-burning but well paced story of shame, guilt, misplaced loyalty and generational trauma, the conclusion of which, once one is in possession of all the facts, has a heartbreaking inevitability.
