• Longlisted for Booker Prize in 2023

• Longlisted for Booker Prize in 2023

From the author of Skippy Dies comes a dazzlingly intricate and poignant tragicomedy about family, fortune, and the struggle to be a good man at the end of the world.

The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie's car business is going under, but instead of doing anything about it, he's out in the woods preparing for the actual end of the world. Meanwhile his wife Imelda is selling off her jewellery on eBay and half-heartedly dodging the attentions of fast-talking local wrongun Big Mike. Their teenage daughter Cass, usually top of her class, seems determined to drink her way through the whole thing. And twelve year old PJ is spending more and more time on video game forums, where he's met a friendly boy named Ethan who never turns his camera on and wants PJ to run away from home.

Digging down through layers of family history, the roots of this crisis stretch deep into the past. Meanwhile in the present, the fault lines keep spreading, ghosts slipping in through the cracks, and every step brings the Barneses closer to a fatal precipice. When the moment of reckoning finally arrives, all four of them must decide how far they're willing to go to save the family, and whether - if the story's already been written - there's still time to give it a happy ending...

A tragicomic triumph. You won't read a sadder, truer, funnier novel this year. - Guardian

The finest novel that Murray has yet written... will surely be one of the books of 2023. - Sunday Independent

Murray is a natural storyteller... Ambitious, expansive, hugely entertaining tragicomic fiction. - Irish Times

It's a thing of beauty, a novel that will fill your heart. - Observer

Generous, immersive, sharp-witted and devastating... a triumph. - Financial Times

It's been compared to Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections; I'd argue it's better. - Daily Mail