WW1 is over. As a nurse at the front, Clementine has found and lost love, but has settled for middle class marriage. Vincent had half his face blown off, and wants more than life offers now. Drawn together by their shared experiences at the Front, they have a compulsive relationship, magnetic and parasitic, played out with blackmail and ending in disaster for one of them.
Glaister is a sensitive but unflinching writer who knows exactly how to beguile the reader into turning the pages.
-- Hilary Mantel'Glaister is an experienced novelist, and this is a consummate and heart-wringing performance.'
* The Sunday Times *'Combines psychological insight with an immersive sense of time and place. In short, she's the perfect lockdown novelist so if you've yet to discover her, now's the ideal time.'
* Metro *'Glaister's novels always appear to be as effortless for her to write as they for us to read.'
* The Times *'Glaister has the uncomfortable knack of putting her finger on things we most fear, of exposing the darkness within.'
* Independent on Sunday *'Elegant and moving'
* Marc's books blog *A sensitive, unsettling tale of a post-First World War romance.
* The Independent *A sensitive and compelling drama.
* Sunday People *Glaister's sense of place and ear for dialogue are brilliantly convincing.
-- Ruth ThomasBlasted Things is a restrained, elegant, deeply compassionate novel.
-- John BurnsideOne of the most compelling novels I have read all year.
-- Liz JensenA moody, mesmerizing tale of a man and a woman who've returned to Suffolk after surviving the atrocities of the Great War.
* East Anglian Daily Times *Glaister is acute in her exploration and depiction of family and social discord.
-- Allan Massie * The Scotsman *Lesley Glaister is a fiction writer, poet, playwright and teacher of writing. She has published fourteen adult novels, the first of a YA trilogy and numerous short stories. She received both a Somerset Maugham and a Betty Trask award for Honour Thy Father (1990), and has won or been listed for several literary prizes for her other work. She has three adult sons and lives in Edinburgh (with frequent sojourns to Orkney) with husband Andrew Greig. She teaches creative writing at the University of St Andrews and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.