<p><b>''Weird and wild and wonderfully unsettling... Dive in for just a moment and you''ll emerge gasping and haunted'' Celeste Ng, bestselling author of <i>Little Fires Everywhere</i></b><br><br> It''s been sixteen years since Gretel last saw her mother, half a lifetime to forget her childhood on the canals. But a phone call will soon reunite them, and bring those wild years flooding back: the secret language that Gretel and her mother invented; the strange boy, Marcus, living on the boat that final winter; the creature said to be underwater, swimming ever closer.<br><br> In the end there will be nothing for Gretel to do but to wade deeper into their past, where family secrets and aged prophesies will all come tragically alive again.<br><br><b>''As readable as it is dazzling, full of unsettling twists and dark revelations'' <i>Observer</i></b><br><b><br>**SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018**</b></p>