**A TALE OF A TRAGEDY SEEPING THROUGH GENERATIONS, AND A FAMILY FRACTURED BY HISTORY AND DESIRE 'Bad Relations is an amazing achievement and one of the most satisfying books you're likely to read this year' The Times** 'Haunting and beautiful... In recent British fiction I can think only of Tessa Hadley who rivals Connolly in exacting such intricate, compelling drama from close-knit families... I don't often wish a book were longer, but this one I did' Observer On the battlefields of the Crimea, William Gale cradles the still-warm body of his brother. William's experience of war will bring about a change in him that will reverberate through his family over the next two centuries. In the 1970s, William's descendants invite Stephen, a distant relation, to stay in their house in the English countryside - but their golden summer entanglements will end in a shocking fall from grace. Half a century later, a confrontation between the surviving members of the family will culminate in a terrible reckoning. 'The characters in Bad Relations are so brilliantly real, so wonderfully compelling at their best, and at their worst, that I can't get them out of my head. A wonderful novel' Nina Stibbe 'This is an Atonement-like novel about the messy stuff that is family life' Spectator 'A compelling family saga' Sunday Times