FEATHERSTONE: an attractive, small rural town serving outlying estates; bank, post office, school . . .

At first glance, Kirsty Gunn's small country town is like any other - a closely connected community bound by habit and familiarity. Yet as we're invited to spend the weekend in Featherstone we come to realise there's something about the place that unsettles us, something intense and intimate that goes deep into the lives of the people who live here and bares their hearts.

'The title of Kirsty Gunn's beautiful new novel is a key - the marvellous weighting of words, how each word falls and floats on the page . . . a richly layered and rewarding novel.' Scotland on Sunday

'A new author of undeniable talent' Sunday Times; 'Kirsty Gunn has the originality of a poet. Her dangerous shifting territory is the underworld of female desire.' The Times

Kirsty Gunn is an internationally awarded writer who published her first novel with Faber in 1994 and since then eight works of fiction, including short stories, as well as a collection of fragments and meditations, and essays. She is Professor of Writing Practice and Study at the University of Dundee and lives in London and Scotland with her husband and two daughters.