The heart is a burial ground - Tamara Colchester

'There is an addictive pungency to this exotic tale of lives lived loudly' Sunday Times
'The remarkable life of Caresse Crosby, now retold by her great-granddaughter' Observer
A vivid and inventive debut novel about four generations of women in a family, their past and their legacy, which evokes the work of Kate Atkinson, Tessa Hadley and Virginia Baily.

'I will describe it as best I can. This is their story. Or perhaps just mine. Let us begin, again . . .'

On a brisk day in 1970, a daughter arrives at her mother’s home to take care of her as she nears the end of her life. ‘Home’ is the sprawling Italian castle of Roccasinibalda, and Diana’s mother is the legendary Caresse Crosby, one half of literature’s most scandalous couple in 1920s Paris, widow of Harry Crosby, the American heir, poet and publisher who epitomised the ‘Lost Generation’.


But it was not only Harry who was lost. Their incendiary love story concealed a darkness that marked mercurial Diana and still burns through the generations: through Diana's troubled daughters Elena and Leonie, and Elena’s young children.


Moving between the decades, between France, Italy and the Channel Islands, Tamara Colchester’s debut novel is an unforgettably powerful portrait of a line of extraordinary women, and the inheritance they give their daughters.

'Sensual, evocative and rich with observational truth, this is a vivid and intricate portrait of three extraordinary women' Jeremy Page, author of Salt

'Evocative' Good Housekeeping

'This is a bold, striking and confident novel filled with vivid, sometimes shocking, scenes. It spans decades, generations and continents without ever feeling disjointed. This is a stunning introduction to an intriguing new voice in British fiction, who does real justice to her prodigious forebear' Netgalley reviewer