In the Fold - Tapa blanda

A story of deception, belonging and a marriage in crisis from one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists.

The Hanburys of Egypt Hill are the last word in bohemian living - or so they like to think. Their parties are famous, their relationships confusing, their bravado immense. Michael, a young student who first encounters the family at a party for Caris Hanbury's eighteenth birthday party, is irrestibly attracted to their enfolding exuberance.

As an adult, Michael finds and marries into his own version of The Hanburys: The Alexanders are immoral, artistic and wealthy. After the birth of their first son, his wife Rebecca finds herself struggling with questions of identity and self-expression while Michael wonders why his life has become so destructive and tumultuous.

When Michael is invited to spend a week with the Hanburys his illusions are startlingly shattered, as the rotten core of the Hanbury myth is gradually revealed.

In the Fold is a story of modern manners and past offences, of public morality and private property; and of how human beings can become undone by their yearning to belong.

Rachel Cusk was born in 1967 and is the author of four novels: Saving Agnes, which won the Whitbread First Novel Award, The Temporary, The Country Life, which won a Somerset Maugham Award and The Lucky Ones, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award. Her non-fiction book A Life's Work was published to huge acclaim in 2001. In 2003 she was chosen as one of Granta's Best of Young British Novelists. She lives in Bristol.