WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD

A couple lie naked in the dunes at Baritone Bay, at the spot where, almost thirty years before, they had first had sex as students. Nostalgia has sent Celice and Joseph back to their singing stretch of coast, but in the seeming calm of the afternoon they meet a brutal and unexpected fate – one which will still their bodies but not their love, and certainly not their story.

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award

A couple lie naked in the dunes at Baritone Bay, at the spot where, almost thirty years before, they had first had sex as students. Nostalgia has sent Celice and Joseph back to their singing stretch of coast, but in the seeming calm of the afternoon they meet a brutal and unexpected fate – one which will still their bodies but not their love, and certainly not their story.