Sundial
Catriona Ward
Viper, £14.99, pp352
Teacher Rob is trying to live a normal life, in suburban America, with her beloved daughters and husband, Irving. But it never quite works: Irving is boiling over with anger, and Callie, the couple’s elder child, likes to talk about murder at breakfast. She also likes to play, secretly, with small bones and talk to things that aren’t there. When something terrible nearly happens to Rob’s younger daughter, Annie, she blames Callie and decides she needs to take her away, back to her childhood home of Sundial, surrounded by miles of chain link fence, deep in the Mojave desert.
Sundial is Catriona Ward’s fourth novel, following the excellent Rawblood and Little Eve, and the bestselling blend of thriller and horror that was The Last House on Needless Street. It is, again, terrifying, and shocking in its exploration of what humans will do to one another and the stains left by childhood trauma.
Ward captures beauty and dread in the endless sand and heat of Rob’s former home, where “desert light falls over distant mountains, [and] the land grows dim, spread out like a dirty coyote pelt under the sky”, where “all that space gets in your head, makes your thoughts go crazy”. When Rob returns, she finds the “desert thoughts” that she had concealed with the trappings of everyday life – “spice racks and my daughters and herbaceous borders, cocktails with neighbours and PTA meetings” – start to spill out, and the person she had kept “walled… up, sealed… off in the dark” starts to emerge.
Moving between perspectives, we see the world through the eyes of Callie, who talks to imaginary friends and wonders who she can trust; through the eyes of Rob, as she confronts the horrors of her past and tries to stop them playing out in the present, and through the eyes of Jack, too, Rob’s sister. “When people say something is ‘unthinkable’, what they usually mean is that they don’t want to think it. They are resistant to an idea,” says Rob. “But that is not what unthinkable means. I understand that now. It means to be confronted with a thought so vast, dark and monstrous that it will not fit into any known shapes in our mind.”
As she slowly exposes evil, Ward wrongfoots the reader at every turn. What were Rob and Jack’s parents trying to do with their strange experiments? What, or who, is Callie seeing when she talks to her imaginary pals? How far will Rob go to keep her daughters safe, and where is the danger really coming from? Sundial is disturbing and yet ultimately moving as the bonds of love become clear.
The Last Woman in the World
Inga Simpson
Sphere, £14.99, pp352
Set in Australia, The Last Woman in the World takes place in the aftermath of pandemics and devastating fires. It’s a sad and broken place, and Rachel, Simpson’s protagonist, has taken refuge in the bush, trying to hold on to life. A knock at her door brings a mother and baby into her world, and she discovers that the region – the world, maybe – has been devastated by a mysterious wave of deaths. Initially creepy and chilling, this becomes a hell-for-leather survival race through burning countryside as Rachel attempts to find her sister.
The Club
Ellery Lloyd
Mantle, £14.99, pp352
The Club is something very different: a super-glamorous locked-room (locked island, really) murder mystery. An ultra-exclusive members’ club is opening its most exclusive retreat yet, on a private island reached only by causeway, and celebrities are descending for the launch event. The luxury on offer is just what they were hoping for – until a body is discovered, floating in the sea outside the underwater restaurant. Glitzy and twisty, it’s tons of fun.
To buy Sundial, The Last Woman in the World or The Club go to guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
