Great book! Great story and well deserved position on the Women's Prize for Fiction longlist. When I read the synopsis I wasn't sure it would be that interesting but how wrong I was. Such amazing writing and description and couldn't put this book down. Definitely 5 out 5 for me.

I am so excited to be on the blog tour for this brilliant book, especially on publication day!
I never expected to read Claire Fuller's novel from start to finish in one sitting but for at least the second time this author grabbed my imagination and didn't let go!
Set outside a village an hour or so away from Oxford, a family of three, Dot and her twins, Jeanie and Julius, eke out their existence in a ramshackle cottage. The twins are 51 years old, have always lived with their mother living an orderly life with nothing going to waste. Dot and Jeanie keep a large garden and sell what they can at a shop in the village. Julius picks up odd jobs wherever he can. They can all play music and give pure joy to whoever gets to hear them.
One of the things that really pulls you into this story is the amazing characterisation. You become invested in these three characters as soon as a couple of pages in and you feel that you could have seen people like this in your own life.
The way that they can be treated by some members in their society does make you really think about how we can treat "outsiders". Those that don't fit into the mold of what we would consider "normal". The people who don't buy from supermarkets, aren't in the rat race, don't embrace technology.
I had to keep going to see what happened to these characters as their lives irrevocably change and whether they are able to survive. They were beautifully described, complex and layered. Jeanie & Julius will be living in my head for a very long time.
Overall, the prose is beautiful and sparse, so you automatically fill in the gaps. The plot is both sharp and gentle, this book is not a typical mystery or thriller that leaves your heard racing, but it seeps into all those spaces in your soul that you didn't even know were yearning for this story. A very special read.
This is far and away my favourite book of 2021 and will be very hard to beat!

Middle-aged twins, Jeannie and Julius Seeder, live an isolated life, scraping out a meagre existence in their rural location, which is made so much worse by the sudden death of their mother. With their main support gone, Jeannie and Julius are left floundering in world which doesn't understand their naivety, or sense their total lack of awareness. Jeannie is the weaker of the twins and yet it is her powerful narrative which relates what happens to them when their world tumbles down around them, and when old secrets, so carefully hidden, threaten to destroy everything they rely on to survive.

Unsettled Ground is a disturbing read and whilst beautifully focused on what is happening in the present, there are hints back to a time when the twins were much younger and the story of a family tragedy which had far reaching effects on all their lives. The strength of the story lies with this author's uncanny ability to make the ordinary into something extraordinary and in creating Jeannie and Julius Seeder she gives us characters who are so engulfing that even when you move away from their story, you still wonder what is going to happen next for them.

There's a deep underlying sadness to the story which is difficult to move away from, and the confining and secluded nature of Jeannie's life, in particular, makes for emotional reading and yet there is also hope in the twins' shared love of music, Jeannie's tender loving care of her garden, and in Julius's strength of character when courage is needed. My heart broke into so many pieces, that there were times when I had to stop reading in order to make a restorative cup of tea so I could gather my thoughts.

Unsettled Ground is a strong and forceful family drama which made me feel quite angry at the injustice of what happened to Jeannie and Julius in the aftermath of their mother's death, and yet there were also times when the story was so tenderly compassionate, and so beautifully observed, that it, quite simply, took my breath away.

The book has been long listed for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2021. It would be a worthy winner.

PUBLISHER’S DESCRIPTION

What if the life you have always known is taken from you in an instant? What would you do to get it back?
Twins Jeanie and Julius have always been different from other people. At 51 years old, they still live with their mother, Dot, in rural isolation and poverty. Their rented cottage is simultaneously their armour against the world and their sanctuary. Inside its walls they make music, in its garden they grow (and sometimes kill) everything they need for sustenance.
But when Dot dies suddenly, threats to their livelihood start raining down. At risk of losing everything, Jeanie and her brother must fight to survive in an increasingly dangerous world as their mother's secrets unfold, putting everything they thought they knew about their lives at stake.
This is a thrilling novel of resilience and hope, of love and survival, that explores with dazzling emotional power how the truths closest to us are often hardest to see.


NO SPOILERS

I really loved Claire Fuller’s debut novel, Our Endless Numbered Days so was chuffed to receive an ARC for review of Unsettled Ground. However, I was disappointed and it took me some time to work out why. As I struggled to write this review my husband asked what I’d thought of the book. I said it wasn’t a great book but I could see it as a 26 episode, Sunday night Netflix series and that’s when it twigged. Unsettled Ground feels as though it was written for just that. There are openers, episode “ends”, twists and reveals (none of which I didn’t see coming) and so, so many scenes fitted into just 287 pages that it is too crowded for the type of reflection I like.

Having said that, if you want a fast paced, family secrets, easy read this may be what you’re after but for me, this book is too plot led and the writing is not crafted enough. It’s not badly written at all but it’s simply not for me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin UK for the complimentary copy of the book, which I have voluntarily reviewed.

A brilliantly descriptive novel that gives much-needed written space to those who live on the fringes of rural life. It’s not so much a thriller - although there is a plot-driven narrative - as a dark tale about all the small things that are done by families to protect other family members over time, only to find those small things added together make up very big lies that, when unravelled, can devastate. I look forward to reading more of Claire Fuller.

At the beginning, there’s a timelessness about this story – the privations suffered by the central characters, their simple way of life initially convince you that it must be set in the early 20th century, perhaps even earlier. It comes as a jolt when you realise that it’s set in the present day, the world of mobile phones and on-line engagement that’s entirely alien to Jeanie – at 52, with a rheumatic heart problem limiting her activities, her world has been confined to life with her mother, tending their vegetable garden, eking out a meagre existence in rural isolation.

Her twin, Julius, is a little more worldly, picking up casual work where he can to bolster their sparse income – he’s rather slipped into the role of being his sister’s protector, but it doesn’t necessarily stop some of the funds passing over the pub counter. The death of mother Dot forces them both to deal with life’s realities – something for which neither of them are equipped, with Jeanie’s strong sense of self sufficiency and never owing anything to anyone only making life considerably more difficult.

There’s a whole series of small (and considerably larger) revelations about the events of the past that shaped them, that brought them to this point in their lives – and the world outside intrudes, destabilises everything, and threatens both their lives and wellbeing. Jeanie is barely literate, the scene when she needs to register her mother’s death particularly poignant and harrowing, and that’s certainly not the only time when the book holds a mirror to contemporary society and finds it considerably lacking in either empathy or compassion.

The characterisation in this book is stunning, and accomplished in a way I’ve never come across before – although the story is told from both Jeanie’s and Julius’ viewpoint, any internal dialogue is sparse, their characters more defined by their actions and the thought behind them, and it’s incredibly powerful. And this isn’t a simple double-hander – there’s a particularly strong supporting cast (supporting, more rarely supportive), every individual complex and well-drawn, their motivation often questionable, their actions at times unbearably damaging and painful.

There is joy amid the bleakness, and that primarily comes from music – Jeanie, Julius and Dot have always sung and played together, and the importance of their music as a source of consolation and comfort is superbly handled, frequently uplifting and reassuring, a little light in the darkness.

The world the author creates is very real – but seeing things through the eyes of the primary characters skews the lens a little, makes you understand how it can be a frightening place, how essential goodness isn’t necessarily enough to ensure safety and survival. It’s important too, I think, to acknowledge how deeply this book makes you feel – so deeply it sometimes hurts, often hard to read – and also has the ability to make you incandescent with rage with an overwhelming feeling of injustice.

I’ve always been an immense fan of Claire Fuller’s writing, the luminous prose, the descriptions and imagery that appeal to all the senses, the way she develops a compelling story. I really thought she couldn’t better Bitter Orange – but I was so wrong. The Women’s Prize long list is a particularly strong one this year, but this book is deserving of every possible accolade… should it win, nothing could make me more delighted.

The set-up for this book is very strong, and it's often a remarkably suspenseful read - especially the last 40%. The stakes, as they say, are raised. It often felt a bit painful to read this, because of how much it made me think of my grandmother, who lived a similarly eccentric and isolated life. These were the strongest parts of the book for me, the ones that focused on everyday existence, and the siblings' struggle to survive. <spoiler>The part where they move into the caravan home and out of the cottage is pretty tough to read, as are the scenes when Jeanie is basically homeless, and eating food off of hospital plates. But even though they're tough going, these scenes are some of the strongest in the book.</spoiler> I also often thought of the part in Knausgaard Book I, where he needs to clean out his father's house. I was also reminded of Barbara Comyns, in terms of rural life, in which everyone's fingers are always cold, and everything is messy and damp.

I did find the book melodramatic at times, and some scenes dragged. It is also often unrelentingly brutal and bleak, specifically in terms of one major plot point <spoiler>(Julius getting shot, and not recovering)</spoiler)... and I'm someone who often criticises books for not being bleak enough! That being said, I have major respect for the author for going to some dark places. I think a lot of writers wouldn't have the courage to do so. And thankfully there is SOME goodness/light at the tunnel at the end <spoiler>(namely, the dog being found- thank God!)</spoiler>, so ultimately as a whole the book is balanced in terms of considering the reader's experience.

Overall, I have a lot respect for Ms. Fuller, for writing like FOUR books in the past six years - a major accomplishment. She's clearly someone with a specific vision - someone who wants to write about people in isolation, and suspenseful, gothic, often violent narratives. Lots of respect for that. I would rather read a book like this than something 'cozy' any day!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publishers for the ARC.

The title is well chosen. From the first page, ‘Unsettled Ground’ by Claire Fuller is unsettling. An eclectic mixture of setting and detail make the timeframe difficult to pin down, it seems other-worldly. An ordinary world, but not quite. This is a world of Google and internet banking, of smartphones and digital life.
Fuller writes about twins Julius and Jeanie who, aged 51, still live with their mother in a remote rural cottage. They scratch a living, cash-in-hand earned from odd jobs, vegetables and eggs sold at the garden gate and the local deli, money kept in a tin rather than a bank account. Everything changes when their mother, Dot, dies suddenly and they realise how she protected them and kept them safe. But with Dot gone, their familiar world collapses. Their routines don’t work, the difficulties their mother smoothed are now rocky, and they are evicted from their home.
This is a novel about relationships – sibling, parental and with the local community – both supportive and dismissive. As the twins attempt to cope with the paperwork following their mother’s death, their isolation from modern society becomes evident to them. Many people step aside from their helplessness, finding them strange and ignorant, people make assumptions and take the easy option of turning away. Jeanie is mortified to find out that other people know more about her life and family history than she does, how neighbours silently colluded in a scenario either from a sense of helplessness, a misguided assumption they are helping, or malicious sniggering. ‘Unsettled Ground’ is an uncomfortable but at the same time uplifting read.
As Julius and Jeanie confront each revelation about the life they have been living, they begin to question each other’s loyalty. Jeanie finds emotional strength she didn't know she had, despite a heart complaint she's had since childhood. She sneaks back home and finds solace in the abandoned garden, harvesting vegetables. This is an uncomfortable depiction of modern poverty in a society where money exchange is cashless and application for help depends on literacy. Both find a way to cope but inevitably they need each other despite their grumbles and disagreements. At times of stress, they pick up their guitars and sing folk songs as their parents taught them.
When the truth slowly emerges about their father’s accidental death and Dot’s subsequent struggle as a single mother, they realise that deep down they had always had suspicions. This is a powerful story about the strength of human nature and the bonds of family, about fighting back against bullies and finding light in the future.
Read more of my book reviews at http://www.sandradanby.com/book-reviews-a-z/

Claire Fuller’s previous novels, Our Endless Numbered Days, Swimming Lessons and Bitter Orange are some of my favourite books. Fuller has such a beautiful way of writing, it is descriptive yet eloquent, nuanced yet detailed and so immersive that I end up falling deeply in love with both her books and her characters. Unsettled Ground, her latest novel has recently been deservedly longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and I am thrilled at the recognition for this incredible writer and this remarkable book.

Unsettled Ground opens with the death of Dot, who lived in a remote farmhouse with her twins, Jeanie and Julius leaving them bereft and alone. They are fifty one and have spent their lives with their mother, largely living in poverty, selling the fruit and vegetables they grow to a local shop and living in isolation. They scrape a living but the three were seemingly happy in their dilapidated cottage with an outside toilet, rubbing along together and living in their own little world.

The book is set in the present but there is a timeless quality to the prose – in fact if it wasn’t for the mention of mobile phones it could have been set any time over the past forty years or so. This timelessness reflects life in the farm house where Dot, Julius and Jeanie have lived for the past four decades, alone since their father died suddenly, a traumatic event which has had long term repercussions for the family and their lives.

As Jeanie and Julius deal with the shock and their grief over the death of their mother, the realities of their situation become apparent. They don’t know how to go about dealing with a sudden death and what the formalities and legalities are. For cloistered Jeanie the confusion is further compounded by her inability to read and write. Dot’s death sets in motion events which throw their plight into sharp relief. They come to realise that their mother was the holder of many secrets, some which have been kept for decades, some which directly impact them and some which cause their situation to become dire.

Although this is a book about grief and secrets, it is also a book about people who fall through the cracks. People who live in busy communities but are in almost isolation. People who are perceived as being odd or a bit different and are avoided by other. It is fragile Jeanie who feels this the most, her world is very small; growing vegetables, feeding chickens, cooking pies, enveloping her dog with love and spending her days with her mother. The world outside is a scary place and my heart broke for her as she was pushed further and further outside of her comfort zone and into a world filled with unsurmountable tasks.

It is almost a coming of age novel, albeit featuring two adults in their fifties. They are quite childlike and innocent in some ways, unskilled in basic life skills and unable to make their way in the world. Yet, Jeanie, who has always felt and been told she is fragile and delicate, shows a backbone of steel and a bravery which surprises even herself. She is such a beautifully written character who it is difficult to dislike and I defy you not to root for her as she scrambles to make a life for her and her brother.

Against a backdrop of some gorgeous depictions of nature – the book opens with one of the most beautiful descriptions of snowfall I think I have ever read – these two people burrow their way out of the dark and closed life they have led and try to find some sunlight. It makes for heart-breaking reading with some passages being almost unbearable to read. But amongst the darkness there is light, and Fuller gradually reveals this to us, slowly banishing the shadows to reveal an elegant and compelling tale of love, resentment and triumph over adversity.

Unsettled Ground is Claire Fuller’s latest novel and akin to Bitter Orange it touches on themes of parental secrets, deep-seated lies and the family dynamic and explores what unfolds when a dependent brother and sister face unacknowledged family trauma and financial straits after their mother dies. We are introduced to 51-year-old twins Jeanie and Julius Seeder who live in a ramshackle, dilapidated old cottage in the rural, fictional Wiltshire village of Inkbourne. They live with their elderly, widowed mother, Dot, who has just turned 70, and spend their spare time growing vegetables, playing folk music and generally keeping to themselves. The cottage is simultaneously their armour and their provider. To an outsider it may look like poverty but, to them, it is home. The land on which the house is built belongs to their wealthy neighbours, the Rawsons, and the difference between their way of life and that of the Seeder family is marked. Julius works odd jobs but never too far away due to his travel sickness affliction and often forgets to ask for payment, whilst Jeanie, who has suffered from a heart condition since childhood, is too frail to work. She spent very little time in school because of this and is therefore almost illiterate. The cottage the family has occupied is rent-free due to a lifetime agreement following the premature death of Dot’s husband, Frank, 39 years ago when the twins were only 12. He was killed in a tractor accident while ploughing the fields on the estate, and they believe the supplier of the tractor, the cottage’s owner Spencer Rawson, to be responsible for his death because the vehicle’s hitch-pins turned out to be faulty. Their mother, they understand, came to an arrangement with Rawson to allow them to live in the cottage rent-free in exchange for not bringing legal action against him.

It's on a chilly, snow-covered April morning when Dot passes away from a stroke and the twins discover her cold on the kitchen floor. From this point on everything unravels. Two overgrown children suddenly become two middle-aged adults with no concept of how to make it in the world alone; the cost of both mollycoddling and manipulation on their mother’s part. They face eviction threats as claims are made about unpaid rent and bills. At the same time, secrets about their mother start unravelling. Who was she really? The twins are exposed to a truth that has far-reaching repercussions, and as members of the local community start to make things difficult for the twins, Jeanie wonders how they will cope in a world that can be cruel and unyielding. A portrait of rural poverty in the 21st Century, Unsettled Ground forces readers to see beyond the unsavoury, the unconventional, the ‘other’ and to recognise the thing that unites us all: the beating heart beneath. This is a story of resilience and hope, of homelessness and hardship, of love and survival, in which two marginalized but remarkable people take centre stage. It's compelling, compulsive and thoroughly evocative with a refreshingly original plot and beautiful prose. As more and more secrets emerge they see life as they knew it crumble before them as they realise their mother was not the person she portrayed herself to be. Jeanie is a captivating heroine, almost Hardyesque in the depths of misery she’s put through, and Fuller writes agonisingly well about abject poverty, isolation and the cruelty of predatory villagers who smell fresh blood. The scenario is thick with jeopardy — just when you think things can’t get worse, they do — yet, blessedly, the climax pulls back from the abyss without losing a jot of drama. Highly recommended.

Unsettled Ground - Clare Fuller

I was given a copy of this book in exchange for a fair review thanks to Penguin General UK - Fig Tree, Hamish Hamilton, Viking, Penguin Life, Penguin Business and Netgalley.

Twins Jeanie and Julius have always been different from other people. At 51 years old, they still live with their mother, Dot, in rural isolation and poverty. Their rented cottage is simultaneously their armour against the world and their sanctuary. Inside its walls they make music, in its garden they grow (and sometimes kill) everything they need for sustenance.

But when Dot dies suddenly, threats to their livelihood start raining down. At risk of losing everything, Jeanie and her brother must fight to survive in an increasingly dangerous world as their mother's secrets unfold, putting everything they thought they knew about their lives at stake.

Jeanie and Julius are so cut off from the rest of the world that you just have to feel sorry for them, with their bleak story. It is a really well written novel with a gripping storyline, but not for the feint hearted, as the twins live in poverty and despair.

I found it very difficult to put this book down, and couldn’t wait to start reading it again. For a book with over 304 pages this is quite a quick read. I would really recommend this book!

Rating 4/5

Release Date - 25th March 2021

“It’s hard to rewrite your own history”: a rich, dense narrative that kept me glued to the page.

Two oddball twins live with their widowed mother Dot on a cottage outside the imaginary village of Inkbourne, Wiltshire, in the heart of rural England. Julius works odd jobs – not too far away as he suffers from car sickness – often forgetting to ask for payment. Jeanie has never had a paid job in her life: frail due to a heart condition developed as a child, she received very little schooling and is virtually illiterate. So far she had lead a sheltered life playing music at home and tending to the vegetables in the cottage the family has occupied rent-free due to a lifetime agreement following the premature death of Dot’s husband 37 years before. The cause: an accident ploughing the fields of the estate with a defective piece of machinery. When Dot dies, the twins face eviction threats as claims are made about unpaid rent and bills. At the same time, secrets about their mother start unravelling. Who was she really? And what happens when the ground under our feet suddenly becomes unsettled?

Unsettled Ground offers a harrowing, quite original treatment of the theme of displacement and survival. Jeanie and Julius live a simple life and exist in a dimension of simplicity which makes them absolutely unprepared to face the demands of the modern world in terms of bills, technology, responsibilities: even writing and signing documents is a problem. We find a subtle psychological portrait of the twins as they go through hardship, detailing fear, humiliation and moments of resilience and self-reliance. Jeanie’s pride, and all she does to avoid being helped stands out. There is also an interesting representation of the way the small rural community reacts, amidst solidarity and vultures trying to take advantage.

But there are other ways one could lose the ground under one’s feet. Fuller explores the unsettling notion that even the people closest to us not be what they seem and that, consequently, we go through life in a deluded state, making wrong assumptions about others and feeling guilty when we shouldn’t.. What ensues from all this is a rich, dense narrative full of suspense which kept me glued to the page. Dense like fear in a forest and the regrets of a life not lived.

I am grateful to the publisher for an ARC via NetGalley.

Unsettled Ground

I’m sorry to give this one only 3 stars as the writing is really special, as it always is from this author. However, I’m sorry to say this book has left me a little underwhelmed. It was very bleak and, unfortunately, just not very believable. Maybe it was just the wrong time for me to read it. I really hope those reading this go on to read the more favourable reviews as well before making up their minds.

Thanks so much to Netgalley and to Penguin for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Unsettled Ground is a very quiet book. And fortunately I love quiet books.

It’s the story of Jeanie and Julius, twins in their 50s, who live in a cottage with their mother. When their mother dies, it’s the story of the secrets she has kept throughout the twins’ lives.

I enjoyed this a lot. I loved the characters, especially Jeanie, figuring things out about modern life. It’s occasionally tense and stressful which made it engaging and exciting, and I found it an easy and quick read.

I’d recommend this to fans of Elizabeth Strout who like quiet books where little happens.

4 stars

Wonderful book. Well-written, expertly paced, astute and insightful, sensitive and sympathetic, it’s a tale of deception, marginalisation and isolation, a tale which I found so moving and unsettling. The title is particularly apt here. Just as the ground beneath the protagonists’ feet is constantly shifting, so is the ground between the reader’s feet. Julius and Jeanie are now in their 50s but still live at home with their mother, who dominates their lives and has kept them close to her with a string of lies and secrets. Their father was killed in a tractor accident when they were 12 and they have been led to believe that the farmer, Spencer Rawson, the owner of the ramshackle cottage they live in, was to blame. Their mother tells them that she came to an arrangement with Rawson to carry on living in the cottage rent-free as recompense and in exchange for not bringing legal action. Dot dies in the first chapter and suddenly the certainties that have shaped the twins’ lives starts to unravel. It’s a grim tale, but ultimately not a depressing one, with moments of grace and hope. I was drawn into it from the first page, and the characters live with me still.

When Dot dies from a stroke at the age of 70, she leaves her twins Jeanie and Julius behind. Even though both of them are well in their adulthood, they still behave like children and therefore are totally overstrained by finding their mother dead on the kitchen floor. The three of them have lead a decent life at the small cottage since their father and husband Frank was killed in an accident, they have never needed much and could rely on their garden and the small amount of money Julius could make in providing a helping hand with all sorts of craftsman jobs. Yet, Jeanie and Julius do not have much time to grieve before all sorts of people turn up from the village claiming money their mother allegedly had borrowed. They can hardly believe it; this does not fit to the image they had of Dot. But this is just the beginning, without the strong and determined woman in the house anymore, the twins become an easy prey and soon have to face an unexpected problem: they are being evicted from what has been their home for decades.

A couple of years ago, I already enjoyed Claire Fuller’s novel “Swimming Lessons” which presented complex characters and a challenging family structure. In “Unsettled Ground”, too, the reader is confronted with a couple of highly interesting characters and an all but usual family construct which slowly unfolds its real tragedy in the course of the novel. Neither Jeanie nor Julius or any other character is easy to sympathise with, the world they have created for themselves is undoubtedly quite unique and takes some time to understand.

The novel has been longlisted for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction which is nevertheless easy to understand. It presents two characters at the critical point in their life when all they have known is threatened, when everything is about to fall apart and when all they have taken for granted and believed to be true has to be reassessed. Jeanie and Julius have a strong bond which nevertheless does not hinder them from coping with the threats they face totally differently. Ultimately, it is the struggle of survival in a hostile world, the attempt to build a life on the broken pieces of the truths they have held to be true but turned out to be all but that.

Admittedly, reading “Unsettled Ground” makes you feel depressed more than once, the story is hard to endure at times. Yet, this surely can be attributed to the author’s skill of transmitting atmosphere and mood in a brilliant way. It’s one of those novels one does not really want to dig deeper in while at the same time one can hardly put down once started.

Let’s start with the part I liked.
Meet Jeanie & Julius – Twins, aged 51, share a secluded life from the rest of the village with their mother Dot, carry the baggage of their father’s suspicious death & loves creating music within the comfort of their own cottage. Dot and her overgrown children seem to lead a normal, uneventful life in their small village, until a snowy April morning when Dot dies from a stroke. In the span of a few hours, we see how Jeanie and Julius transform from being dependent on their old mother, to two clueless middle aged adults who are forced to take responsibility for their own lives, and paying dues of the secretive & mysterious life led by their mother. Well, this is the most interesting part of the book.
Now to the part I didn't enjoy and thought was unnecessary.
Claire Fuller does a beautiful job with her descriptions of the twins' burdened life in the village as they struggle to piece together the loose ends of their mother’s life. But then when you are 70% into the book, she makes the unfortunate decision to astound the reader by a very unnecessary incident that ruins the flow of narration entirely. In this attempt to create a climax to the mysterious life of Dot, she leaves a lot of interesting bits of the story hanging. It almost felt like she was tired of writing a slow paced book and wanted to end it with a “bang”. The “bang” was more of a “poof” because one part of it was quite predictable, and the other was utterly unnecessary. In my opinion there was enough material in the story for her to build on the suspicion of the reader and turn it into a 5 star book.
The story of Jeanie & Julius is quite bleak, but I would have loved it if the author paid more attention to the secretive nature of Dot as a character and on portraying the multitudes of its effect on her children’s life, which could have been less predictable as compared to what the book has to offer. It came across as a bit lazy, and at the end of it, I couldn’t care less about Jeanie, Julius and Dot - which is quite sad.

I always look forward to a new Claire Fuller novel because the tone and story are always on my wavelength. Unsettled Ground takes the sympathetic characters of brother and sister Julius and Jeannie and puts them through so much misfortune and bad luck that you really feel for their plight and become frustrated at their character flaws - Jeannie blames her mother, Dot, for never asking for help but she is exactly in the same mould - stubborn and reticent to ask others for support.
There are echoes of previous Fuller novels within the pages, as the family secrets reminded me of Swimming Lessons and the caravan in the woods with the piano harked back to Our Endless Numbered Days.
I loved and recoiled at the description and situation they found themselves in, living in the mouldy, damp caravan - the descriptions were vivid. It made the reader think about how fragile our security is and what life must be like for anyone who finds themselves homeless.
The secrets and the tragic twists of fate brought Thomas Hardy to mind and I very much felt that this could have been a modern interpretation of a Hardy novel.
In the long list for the Women's Prize 2021, I hope that this does very well indeed!

Just longlisted for the Woman's Prize for Fiction, Unsettled Ground is about Jeanie and Julius. Fifty-one year old twins, living in the margins of society, isolated, spending their whole lives living with their Mother in rural England. Their rented cottage is simultaneously their armour against the world and their sanctuary. Inside its walls they make music, in its garden they grow everything they need for sustenance. When their Mother suddenly passes away the twins are left struggling to cope with little money, no home and job security.

Fuller's writing is stunning, she crafts such vivid characters and settings in this heart-breaking novel. Despite it all, this is about resilience and hope, love and survival above everything else. Jeanie is an incredible character that I think I'm going to be thinking about for a long time, every punch life threw at her landed with sick precision and she kept moving forward. This book is beautiful, it's moved me in ways I didn't foresee, I recommend you read it.

Publishing on 25/03/21, thank you so much Fig Tree for my copy.

I heard this week that Claire Fuller’s Unsettled Ground has been longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction and I thought that this shows exceptional good taste and wisdom from the judges, as it really is a wonderful book.

Although this book has some very bleak moments for the main characters, there is always a beauty to the writing that lifts even the most hopeless of situations in Julius and Jeanie’s lives. I said last year when I read Hamnet that I was so jealous of Maggie O’Farrell’s beautiful use of words, and the same goes for Claire Fuller – sometimes the sparest sentence can evoke the most vivid pictures and I stand in awe of her skill.

At the heart of the book is a single lie, which has grown and multipled over the course of years to become a tangled web of pain and deceit, made by Julius and Jeanie’s mum, Dot. As we see her dying mometns it seems that she realises what she’s done, but it’s too late to save her children from what they have to face next.

As Dot’s lies begin to come out the twins must face the truth without Dot’s protection and with little ability to provide for themselves which, at the age of 51 is a huge culture shock – in some ways, they are living ‘out of time’ – they’ve no bank accounts, few modern conveniences and a stubborn refusal to accept help from anyone, so when their lives start to unravel it’;s an unstoppable force.

I though Julius and Jeanie were wonderful characters as, although they were quite childlike in some respects, there was potential there and by the times we leave them at the end of the book, we’re content to do so, knowing that they’re going to be ok. That’s another of Claire Fuller’s great strengths – making you really, truly care for her characters with all their faults and foibles.

The strongest thread running through the book is music, which is at the heart of the Seeder family. Even at the heart of their biggest disagreements, the music is able to bring them back together and give them comfort.

This is a powerful book, touching on the strength of family, and the weakness of individuals within that family. It’s sometimes a hard road to get there, but it’s ultimately an uplifting and rewarding read.