A Crooked Tree

'A brilliant novel. Every detail sparkles; every page is rich in atmosphere and intensity; every character is vividly described.' - Sara Baume

'Una Mannion’s A Crooked Tree is an assured and atmospheric debut, immaculately plotted, with a sense of danger seeping from every shadow. The fraught relationships between mothers and daughters, sisters, best friends and crushes, are captured deftly, as is the ominous sense that losing your balance on the twisting pathway from adolescence to young adulthood, for even just one moment, could have fatal consequences. A thoroughly gripping read.' - Lucy Caldwell

'Beautifully written with tenderness and wisdom, A Crooked Tree is at once an urgent, propulsive study of grief, anger, and family secrets, and a tightly wound coming-of-age story filled with complexity and grace.' - Elizabeth Wetmore

'Filled with pathos, nostalgia, and the best kind of suspense. Una Mannion has beautifully captured the experience of being a child on the verge of adulthood, struggling to fill in the gaps in her understanding of the world around her without much help or mentorship. This is a novel about the way that adults fail children, but also about the moment a child first understands that the adults around her are human--and the empathy that comes with that realization.' - Liz Moore

'Completely entrancing—as suspenseful as a good thriller, steeped in an aching nostalgia but unflinchingly sharp-sighted. I tore through this novel.' - Julia Pierpont