What do you think?
Groundwater
By the winner of the Betty Trask Prize – an atmospheric and powerfully menacing story about family, secrets and violence
John and Liz have left the city behind to move to a remote house on the shores of the lake. Though the house is barely unpacked, Liz's sister, with her children and her husband, have come to visit for the August bank holiday weekend.
Over the course of a hot, slow weekend, tensions simmer; things go unsaid – between the two couples, between the two sisters. Their time together is punctured by visits from Jim, the solitary local warden for the area; and a group of students camping nearby draw closer and closer, finally infiltrating the house – and bringing their own tensions and hierarchies with them.
As the weekend draws to a close, the landscape reveals a violence that has long lain hidden – and the summer builds to its harrowing climax.
Taut and menacing, full of disquiet and tenderness, Groundwater is about the gulfs that lies between us and those we love – and the miraculous ways our deepest desires and fears manifest.
John and Liz have left the city behind to move to a remote house on the shores of the lake. Though the house is barely unpacked, Liz's sister, with her children and her husband, have come to visit for the August bank holiday weekend.
Over the course of a hot, slow weekend, tensions simmer; things go unsaid – between the two couples, between the two sisters. Their time together is punctured by visits from Jim, the solitary local warden for the area; and a group of students camping nearby draw closer and closer, finally infiltrating the house – and bringing their own tensions and hierarchies with them.
As the weekend draws to a close, the landscape reveals a violence that has long lain hidden – and the summer builds to its harrowing climax.
Taut and menacing, full of disquiet and tenderness, Groundwater is about the gulfs that lies between us and those we love – and the miraculous ways our deepest desires and fears manifest.
299 pages, Kindle Edition
Published July 17, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 27, 2025
The publisher uses the word ‘unsettling’ in the promotion for the book, though I didn’t find it in the least bit unsettling.
There are moments of horror, but so very subtle that it was barely noticeable. I think that’s intentional from McMullan, to tease his reader with tropes of horror, and then take the plot in a different direction. It didn’t work for me.
There isn’t enough interest in the characters and their situation to carry the story when the plot turning away from any potential menace or the uncanny, just a sense of frustration and disappointment.
It badly needed some humour as well.
There are moments of horror, but so very subtle that it was barely noticeable. I think that’s intentional from McMullan, to tease his reader with tropes of horror, and then take the plot in a different direction. It didn’t work for me.
There isn’t enough interest in the characters and their situation to carry the story when the plot turning away from any potential menace or the uncanny, just a sense of frustration and disappointment.
It badly needed some humour as well.
August 11, 2025
I should have listened to The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
I don't think I've ever read a review that, basically, recommends reading a different book. (Sarah Moss’s Summerwater, if you're wondering .... ) Based on the 60-odd pages I managed, I would heartily endorse everything the reviewer says.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
I don't think I've ever read a review that, basically, recommends reading a different book. (Sarah Moss’s Summerwater, if you're wondering .... ) Based on the 60-odd pages I managed, I would heartily endorse everything the reviewer says.
August 31, 2025
Beautifully poetic, heavy on foreboding atmosphere... I felt like something bad was about to happen all the way through. I couldn't always follow it; many, many characters and an annoying device of switching between viewpoints and back again within the same scene, all of which made it a bit of a tangle. Some lovely scene building though and overall I enjoyed. Left me with a strong feeling of the poignancy of time passing especially as I finished this on the very last day of Summer.
May 4, 2026
Very boring.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews