The Engagement

by Chloe Hooper

Two people. How many lies? A woman and a man drive at dusk to a rural mansion for a final weekend together. It's all been a game. Both players understood the rules. Or so the woman thinks. At the house, a new game begins. A trap has been set. But how and why? And for whom?

"A complex psychological thriller that draws on the rich literary history of madwomen in the attic, from Jane Eyre and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" to Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca... The Engagement is not Fifty Shades of Grey; its kicks, and kicks in the teeth, are much more subtle." -- Lucy Scholes * Independent *
"The pages fly past so quickly you almost miss the sharp turn of phrase and imagery ... Chloe Hooper's novel engages us, like Liese in Colquhoun's fantasy, in an S&M web for which we don't know the safe word." -- Fleur MacDonald * Literary Review *
"The novel has an affecting oddness all its own... I hope that some of E L James' seemingly insatiable fans chance upon The Engagement and find there is more satisfaction in its pages than in Christian Grey's whipping room." -- Alex Peake-Tomkinson * Daily Telegraph *
"The Engagement is Chloe Hooper's second novel and comes almost a decade after her well-received debut, A Child's Book of True Crime. It is a much tighter, more suspenseful work... The Engagement is compelling." -- Stephanie Bishop * Times Literary Supplement *
"Hooper ably sustains the tension, carefully deploying surprises. The isolation of the farm and the "creeping shocks" of the wilderness create a potent unease." * The New Yorker *

Chloe Hooper was born in 1973. Her highly praised first novel, A Child's Book of True Crime (2002), was shortlisted for the Orange Prize. Her Observer article about the Doomadgee case, 'Island of Lost Souls', was shortlisted for the Amnesty International Media Awards. Her last book, The Tall Man, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2009. In Australia, it won seven major literary awards.