Publisher's Synopsis
Two Cambridge academics, historians Nick and Sarah Mallinson, take a sabbatical with their three lively girls in a remote Languedoc farmhouse. But the farmhouse has a history of its own, and the illusion of Eden begins to retreat. The couple feel the vulnerability of being among strangers, and being strangers themselves - even in their own place, and even to their own children. Sarah frets about the danger of the swimming pool and the presence of wild boar, while the local hunters' guns concern Nick. And what should they make of the gardener, Jean-Luc, who lives with his invalid mother in the village and whose private world involves collecting arcane rubbish, spying on Sarah's naked dips in the pool and hammering nails into a doll...
