About the book…
‘No one writes about modern family with more truth or authenticity than Fiona Neill’ Lisa Jewell
Everyone is talking about Grace’s family. Once it was for all the right reasons – now it’s for all the wrong ones.
Grace is determined to give her daughters the idyllic childhood she never had.
Teenage Lilly is everyone’s golden girl, the one Grace never has to worry about – unlike ten-year-old Mia, whose wild imagination often gets her into trouble.
But when Lilly suddenly collapses at school, Grace’s carefully ordered world is turned upside down.
Because it soon turns out that Lilly wasn’t the perfect daughter after all.
Grace is fixated on discovering the truth about Lilly. Which is when she takes her eyes off Mia . . .
Beneath the Surface, the stunning new novel from Sunday Timesbestseller Fiona Neill, explores the consequences of family expectations and the burden of keeping secrets.
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‘A rich, dark and satisfying read about the complexities of modern family life. I adored it’ Jane Fallon
‘Neill describes human dysfunction with such compelling empathy . . . richly tense and deeply satisfying. I didn’t want to finish!’ Hilary Boyd
‘Beautifully told with great suspense’ Rachel Hore
‘The perfect read to lose yourself in on holiday this summer’Isabelle Broom, Woman & Home Reading Room
‘With her trademark dark humour and incisive observations of family life, Neill takes the reader on a fascinating, moving and intelligent journey to the truth’ Gillian McAllister
Praise for Fiona Neill:
‘A novel made for heated book club debates’ Stylist
‘Vivid and insightful’ Guardian
‘Beneath The Surface’ has so many rich layers to it that it is difficult to know where to start. It’s a literary exploration of the lives of a family-2 brothers married to very different wives, Patrick, teacher, scholar, hider of secrets is married to Grace, who struggles with her own troubled background,is a journalist which is not meeting her expectations of a dream job.Patrick’s brother, Rob and his wife,Ana, are unable to have children, something loudly aand explosively revealed at the very start, at the barbecue from hell where Lilly and Mia, Patrick and Grace’s children are hiding in the garage with secrets of their own.
This one scene perfectly places all the players in the novel, the reader immediately gets the sense of the role each one occupies and then Fiona gradually strips away layer after layer as events surround and consume them all.
Lilly collapses at school, laving her family and medical staff confused at to what the cause was-Grace, on going through Lilly’s phone looking for clues to a hidden relationship with a boy she was unaware of, finds herself further away from younger daughter Mia and her husband Patrick. Whilst Patrick is burying his financial worries ever deeper, Grace and her dissatisfaction with the life she hoped to build for her family, is becoming ever more volatile.
The title is absolutely perfect, it neatly reflects the allegory of the English Fen location of the book, where Mia’s obsession with ancient history,such as the tale of ‘Beowulf’ and the malarial sickness, Ague, reveals that plagues were rife until the marshlands of the Fens were drained. What is then exposed may not be pretty -the plotline about the archaeological dig is simultaneously heatrbreaking and educational-but is a neat allegory for this family in crisis. Lilly is keeping a secret that has literally made her sick. Grace has overlooked Lilly because Mia is such an odd and demanding child and is struck with guilt about this. Patrick is borrowing increasingly large sums of money off his childless brother, Rob, to keep his perception of what should be a good life afloat. All these lies are making them sick and as with the cure for the Ague, they seem to sleepwalk soporifically through their existence.
I did find it hard to believe that when Grace has to attendd yet another parent conference for Mia, that a 10 year old would say the following to their teacher-
”We’ve been talking a lot today about the importance of honesty,haven’t we Mia?’she says all kindly tone and steely glare.
‘You have,’says Mia.
‘And what did we learn?’
‘I learnt that you think my truth is a lie,’says Mia flatly.’I don’t know what you learnt,Miss Swain.”
Mia is a mix of odd contradictions for a child her age, she is forthright and very intelligent yet still believes in superstitious routines such as praying to ancient gods to help her traveller friend Tas. As the archaeological dig continues to expose ancient relics , it is encroaching on the land that the travellers use to camp on and she is massively concerned that Tas will have to move.
Lilly has been lying to her parents , her parents have been lying to each other and themselves over and over, until it becomes impossible to hide the truth any longer .And at the sidelines are Ana and Rob who see first hand the cost of parenting whilst desperate for their own child.
A searing portrait of a very modern family with such a precise and well rounded sense of location, history and place , it shows that what may be hidden will always find a way to come up to the surface and reveal its secrets. It’s a stunning and very moving, almost hynotic read that pulls you under and is completely engrossing.
My thanks to Penguin Michael Joseph and Netgalley for my gifted ebook copy of ‘Beneath The Surface’.
About the author…
Fiona Neill is an author and journalist who has written five Sunday Times bestsellers. Her last novel, ‘The Betrayals’, sold over 130,000 copies and was a Richard & Judy Book Club selection.
Fiona worked as a foreign correspondent in Central America for six years and returned to the UK as assistant editor on Marie Claire before joining The Times Magazine as assistant editor. She has written features for many publications including The Times, Sunday Times Style, and the Telegraph Magazine as well as having written a screenplay of her first novel for the BFI.
Fiona grew up in rural North Norfolk and lives in London with her husband and three children.
Links-https://www.fionaneill.co.uk/
https://www.fensforthefuture.org.uk/
Twitter @MichaelJBooks
Author
bridgeman.lenny@gmail.com