A flaw in the design

Oates, Nathan

£9.99

Gil knows his nephew Matthew is dangerous. The signs were there early – on a family holiday Gil’s daughter was discovered nearly drowning at the bottom of a swimming pool, while Matthew looked on from the deck. Now seventeen, Matthew is orphaned when his parents die in a car crash. He must leave his Upper East Side Manhattan life behind, to live with Gil, his wife and daughters in rural Vermont. He is insolent, bored, disconnected. At least that’s Gil’s take. To the women in the family he is charming, intelligent, wry. But when he disdainfully joins Gil’s writing classes at the local university, Matthew’s fiction shows a vivid and macabre imagination spilling onto the page. Matthew is clearly announcing his intentions to Gil, taunting him before he does something awful to his family. But why is Gil the only one who can see this?

Out of stock

Publish Date: 04/01/2024

Description

‘Absorbing and original . . . A very smart tale packed with jeopardy’ Daily Mail’Keeps you guessing till the very end’ The Times’An absolute page-turner’ Miranda Cowley Heller, author of The Paper PalaceHe’s in your house. He’s in your family. Or is he in your mind?Gil has been estranged from his sister ever since her obnoxious son tried to drown his daughter on a family holiday. That’s Gil’s interpretation; his sister thinks Matthew was just playing around.Or did. When she and her husband perish in a car crash, Gil becomes Matthew’s legal guardian. Matthew is now an urbane 17-year-old, raised on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, a planet away from rural Vermont, where Gil lives with his wife and daughters, teaching at the local university.At first, Matthew appears to have changed, but when he joins Gil’s writing class, he submits a story detailing the various ways a character resembling Gil’s youngest daughter might die. While Gil believes he has invited a psychopath to live under his roof, the women in his life are impressed by Matthew’s intelligence and charm. Is Gil losing his mind, or are his family in desperate danger?

Additional information

Weight 240 g
Dimensions 196 × 128 × 24 mm
Author

Publisher

Imprint

Cover

Paperback

Pages

304

Language

English

Edition

1st paperback ed

Dewey

813.6 (edition:23)

Readership

General – Trade / Code: K