The Well

Amazon Rising Star, 2015

What if you might have committed a shocking act of violence?
What if that act of violence was the murder of your own grandchild?

It hasn’t rained in Britain for three years. Except at The Well, Ruth and Mark’s rural property, their haven from the pressures of the city. But their lush garden paradise has made the outside world envious and suspicious, and the idyll soon turns sour.

Then Lucien arrives, the child to brighten their lives, and the sisters of the rose set up camp, drawn by the miracle of the rain.

And Ruth is swept inexorably towards her darkest nightmare.

The Well is a haunting novel that probes the fragility of our personal relationships and the mystical connection between people and the places they call home.

Catherine Chanter is a teacher, poet and short story writer. She is the winner of the Yeovil Poetry Prize and the Lucy Cavendish prize awarded by Cambridge University. She grew up in the West Country before attending Oxford. The Well is her first novel.

‘The Well asks us where do we seek refuge, and why? And perhaps it shows us that what is left, after all is suffered, is love. Battered, weathered, at the end of the novel it comes cresting over the hill, a herald of relief. I loved this book!’ Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist

‘This accomplished debut…is both a futuristic evocation of a Big Brother society and an Ibsenite fable of humans faced with limited resources.’ Guardian