The lie of the land - Amanda Craig

'Terrific, page-turning, slyly funny' India Knight

'As satisfying a novel as I have read in years' Sarah Perry

'Absolutely magnificent' Marian Keyes

Quentin and Lottie Bredin, like many modern couples, can't afford to divorce. Having lost their jobs in the recession, they can't afford to go on living in London; instead, they must downsize and move their three children to a house in a remote part of Devon. Arrogant and adulterous, Quentin can't understand why Lottie is so angry; devastated and humiliated, Lottie feels herself to have been intolerably wounded.

Mud, mice and quarrels are one thing - but why is their rent so low? What is the mystery surrounding their unappealing new home? The beauty of the landscape is ravishing, yet it conceals a dark side involving poverty, revenge, abuse and violence which will rise up to threaten them.

Sally Verity, happily married but unhappily childless knows a different side to country life, as both a Health Visitor and a sheep farmer's wife; and when Lottie's innocent teenage son Xan gets a zero-hours contract at a local pie factory, he sees yet another.
At the end of their year, the lives of all will be changed for ever.

A suspenseful black comedy, this is a rich, compassionate and enthralling novel in its depiction of the English countryside, and the potentially lethal interplay between money and marriage.

Amanda Craig is a British novelist, short-story writer and critic. After a brief time in advertising and PR, she became a journalist for newspapers such as the Sunday Times, Observer, Daily Telegraph and Independent, winning both the Young Journalist of the Year and the Catherine Pakenham Award. She was the children's critic for the Independent on Sunday and The Times. She still reviews children's books for the New Statesman, and literary fiction for the Observer, but is mostly a full-time novelist. Her novel Hearts and Minds was longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction and The Lie of the Land was chosen as book of the year by the Guardian, Observer, Telegraph, New Statesman, Evening Standard, Sunday Times and Irish Times.

There is much to relish here. The sharp characters, the smooth grown-up prose, the irony, and the ability to weave warmth and dark honesty like few other novelists can. A very good read indeed

Terrific, page-turning, slyly funny
Sunday Times

Amanda Craig's new novel delivers wit, mysteries and a dark commentary on the differences between life in the London bubble and the rest of the country
Daily Mail

Absolutely magnificent state of the nation novel . . . very funny, very painful. If a man like John Lanchester had written this they'd be calling it a searing indictment of contemporary Britain

A gripping, compassionate and often funny take on a cross-section of Britain that fiction tends to overlook. In the end, it is good to get out of London
Sunday Times

Funny, compassionate and psychologically probing
Bernardine Evaristo

Craig's humour is truthful and easygoing, and she's even-handed to both the weird Devonians and xrass urban "incomers". Just as in Cold Comfort Farm, there is something nasty in the woodshed
Vogue

As satisfying a novel as I have read in years. It is a wickedly observant comedy of manners, very alert to the way we live now, but somehow never cruel or judgmental
Guardian

Amanda Craig is one of the most brilliant and entertaining novelists now working in Britain and her range of sympathy and humor and understanding of the Way We Live Now are deeply impressive
Alison Lurie

Witty, vicious, dark and unsettling, it's a book that has finally propelled Craig to her rightful place at the top table of contemporary novelists
Observer

Like those great, state-of-the-nation chroniclers Balzac and Dickens, she perceives how all levels of society are unwittingly interconnected. In The Lie of the Land, she assembles a cracking cast of characters...If Evelyn Waugh had a social conscience and liked children, he could have been Craig
Sunday Telegraph

It's a hell of a novel - dark, gripping and beautifully written
Observer

Craig's energetic satire of middle-class manners segues seamlessly into edge-of-the-seat murder mystery
Daily Mail

I loved the The Lie of the Land.
A panoramic, superbly-plotted novel about the ways we live now, about money and desire, cruelty and generosity, crime and vengeance, country and city. Craig is at the top of her game in the sweep of her storytelling, the richness of her characters, her black comedy, irony and commitment
Helen Dunmore

One of my favourite reads of 2017... Craig's characters - old pop stars, failed poets, casual racists - are perfectly drawn and the writing is sharp, witty and very well-researched. I swear I'll never eat another meat pie after reading this. It works on every level... a social satire, a family drama and, yes, a mystery
Antony Horowitz

A wily novel turns the country idyll on its head...This is a novel that pulls in all sorts of directions but keeps in sight that people are always capable of change
Guardian

Connoisseurs of schadenfreude will love this cautionary tale
Mail on Sunday

an assured tale of rural disillusionment... An enjoyable, sharp-witted and at times knowingly melodramatic novel, it lives up to the promise of its title
Financial Times

This clever novel, with its dollop of state-of-the-nation reflection, is timely
Mail on Sunday

Companionable, deceptively lightly written novel that uses a marriage-in-crisis plot to expose the fault lines in post EU referendum Britain
Metro

A great novelist, with an extraordinary mixture of deep compassion for humanity and a witheringly satirical eye, Amanda Craig shows us the reality, through the eyes of her expertly drawn characters
Country Life

Craig's finger is on the nation's pulse in this sharply perceived family drama
Woman & Home