Landscapes

Set in a near-future fraught with ecological collapse, Christine Lais mesmerising and prismatic debut novel Landscapes is a brilliant exploration of memory, empathy, preservation, and art as an instrument for recollection and renewal. In the English countrysidedecimated by heat and droughtPenelope archives what remains of an estates once notable collection. As she catalogues the librarys contents, she keeps a diary of her final months in the dilapidated country house that has been her home for two decades and a refuge for those who have been displaced by disasters. Out of necessity, Penelope and her partner, Aidan, have sold the house and its scheduled demolition marks the pressing deadline for completing the archive. But with it also comes the impending return of Aidans brother, Julian, at whose hands Penelope suffered during a brief but violent relationship twenty-two years before. As Julians visit looms, Penelope finds herself unable to suppress the past, clinging to art as a means of understanding, of survival, and of reckoning. Recalling the works of Rachel Cusk and Kazuo Ishiguro, Landscapes is an elegiac and spellbinding blend of narrative, essay, and diary that reinvents the country-house novel for our age of catastrophe, announcing the arrival of an extraordinarily gifted new writer.