Emily Maguire

she actually disregards that in her own mind, even as she says there's a menagerie going on in her chest.

And she thinks, what's another person going to do if my heart stops?

How is it going to help to have a witness?

And then we leave her there.

Yeah, absolutely.

That was one of my favourite chapters, actually, with Alex out on the boat.

I mean, he does sort of head out there because drowning in a lock in torrential rain is more preferable to him than staying in the cabin with his teenage sister and parents for any longer.

But you're right, he does, much like Justine in that first chapter, when he's out in it and in his body, there's a real sense of joy.

And the danger is always there.

It's a really dangerous situation he's put himself in.

And then again, there's sort of

dispatches from the natural world that come between each of the character chapters they kind of really underline all this and they were the bits that really gave me the shivers it's right after that chapter with Alex out on the kayak that there's one of these little short chapters and there's a description of the lock that he's just been in and it says that at the bottom of it are the remnants the small boats of boys in every century who never came home and the water holds the hand stitches of their clothes and the cow ghosts of their shoes and the amulets that did not help when they were needed

It's incredible writing and it is, you know, as Aoife said too, this sense of there's sort of these individuals in their bubbles concerned with their own sometimes petty, sometimes huge problems and they are just each a vulnerable, really impermanent body and this deep history of the place they're in goes on.

Yeah, and this was, I guess, my biggest disappointment in the book.

Disappointment's probably too strong a word, but

I had been hoping once I realised that we were getting all these different perspectives that a lot of the other characters were very concerned with this cabin where there's a little girl who we find out is called Violetta and her mother who are described as Ukrainian and also by certain other characters don't seem to care what they are and call them all different kinds of nationalities.

But they're sort of really considered the outsiders.

They have loud parties which are disrupting the

peace and quiet or the endless sound of the rain.

And the little girl is described as being dressed really inappropriately for the weather and for the outdoors.