The House at the Edge of the World by Julia Rochester

While not a detective story this first novel by Julia Rochester relies on the element of surprise and I simply could not put it down until it was finished in one day. The narrator Morwenna is eighteen years old at the start and she and her twin brother Corwin live with their unhappily married parents and paternal grandfather, Matthew, on the family estate near the coast in Devon.

The twins' mother hates the place while both her husband and father-in-law have centred their lives on the property. Matthew is an artist who has for years been working on an enormous painting of the estate and the surrounding area. The twins have a very unusually close relationship even for twins.

One evening the twins' father, while walking home drunk from the pub with a friend, falls to his death from the cliff top. Soon after his death the twins move away to start their separate adult lives, Corwin in Africa and Morwenna to London. However after years away, they return to the family home and question their father's death.

If novels about families and their secrets are your thing then this book is well worth looking at.

Posted by VT

Catalogue link: The House on the Edge of the World