Half Broken Things

'This book is a triumphant performance. People will be standing to applaud ... She displays an astonishing insight into the darker recesses of the human soul ... After I finished this book I found it hard to sleep, so deep was my disquiet at the gathering horror of the narrative and the subtle way in which Joss makes the reader complicit through inevitable sympathy with the damaged ones. Her confidence in handling shifts of narrative, the unobtrusively fine descriptions of the natural world, and uncanny gift for dialogue and, above all, a forensic ability to deconstruct psychological disintegration, combine to make a work of fiction that sets its author on the path to greatness.' - -- Bel Mooney, The Times 'A fascinating moral exercise as well as a gripping novel' -- Scotland on Sunday 'HALF BROKEN THINGS is sad, funny, original and wise' -- The Literary Review 'Well written and well plotted, with a good Bath background' -- Evening Standard 'Morag Joss gets better with each book.' -- Donna Leon on Fruitful Bodies

Jean, Michael and Steph are three reluctant loners who are getting by. Damaged and fearful of life, they cannot survive alone for much longer. A mixture of deceit, good luck and misfortune draw them together to Walden Manor, a secluded and gracious country house that promises sanctuary, freedom from failure and impending destitution. Out of an invented past they shape a beautiful present, full of hope and happiness. And beguiled by the gentle passing of time itself, all three of them, for the first time in their lives, lose their dread of the future. If their sense of safety is built on a delusion, does it matter? When the idyll is threatened, Jean, Michael and Steph discover that because their lives are now worth living they are also now worth preserving, although at appalling cost. In this stunning novel, which explores what happens when the 'have-nots' strive to become the 'haves', Morag Joss combines thought-provoking, sometimes chilling moral complexity with humane and compelling story-telling. Half Broken Things is a dark story, richly told, about love and our need for it: the damage done when we go too long without it, and what people might be driven to do in its name.