Twins are left to defend themselves

Jeanie and Julius, the twins have always been different from other people. At 51 years old, they still live with their mother, Dot, in rural isolation and poverty, Inside the Walls of their English old cottage in the fictional Melbourne, they make music, and in the garden, they grew everything they need for sustenance. While the ground and perimeter are continually threatened with collapse the small family keeps- largely to themselves.

While over the Rawsons’ house clipped commands – “ Alexia, kitchen lights off” reveal the starkness of their differences.

When Dot dies suddenly, threats to their livelihood start raining down, Jeanie and Julius would do anything to preserve their small sanctuary against the perils of the outside world, even as their mother’s secrets begin to unravel, putting everything they thought they knew about their lives at stake. “The worries of seventy years- the money, the infidelity, the small deceits- are cutaway” in an instant, and the twins are left to fend for themselves.”

Claire Fuller won the Desmond Elliot Prize for debut fiction with Our Endless Numbered Days”, but her latest book Unsettled Ground shares with Fuller’s previous work themes of closely guarded family secrets and homes built upon shaky foundations.

Unsettled Ground by Claire Fuller, Fig Tree £ 14.99, 304 pages.