The stories in the novel intersect and reflect on one another. Nothing is fixed, these are lives still being lived by people in a sensuously present locality which, like dreamers, they go beyond. -- David Constantine I was compelled: impressed by the mixture of gravity and vivacity that informs every aspect of the novel. I recognised the world it portrays and yet I learned from it too. And all spun from a capacious, fine prose that sounds the depths and resonances of its sentences with admirable clarity. -- Rachel Cusk This is a morality tale, in its most satisfying guise: a commentary on the disposition of our times, its temptations and its punishments, and at the same time a book of human character, of people's needs and losses, expectations and disappointments, of their weaknesses and their fragile unexamined strengths. I recognised the world it portrays and yet I learned from it too. And all spun from a capacious, fine prose that sounds the depths and resonances of its sentences with admirable clarity. -- Rachel Cusk

In an idyllic village in south-west France, a web of lives interconnect, ready to unravel at the first touch. Alex is running from a teenage love-affair that went badly wrong at home in England. Julien, the retired village schoolmaster, is struggling with loneliness and insomnia. Pete has everything – a wife who loves him, an existence of ease and freedom – yet he’s frightened of something. Magali wants so much more than the life her parents had. And Damien’s angry with all of it.

And then through their world passes a walker, or a pilgrim, on the old Santiago de Compostela pilgrim path. He accidentally moves a rock a couple of metres and continues on his way. And by the time he has travelled a few more slow days towards Santiago, the lives of every inhabitant of this small community will be irrevocably changed.

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What a treat: at last someone has solved the problem of how to experiment, con brio, with time and form in the novel and yet keep it readable, accessible and full of heart.

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Susan Wicks’s prose works find haunting new shapes for the practical and emotional dilemmas specific to modern women’s lives.

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She is neither naïve nor inexperienced, and yet her writing has a bloom on it. There’s a fine surprise at the act of writing itself, and what it can accomplish.