The poet’s novel of art and abuse vividly evokes one woman’s quest to uncover long-lost memories

In this haunting and hypnotic first novel from the award-winning poet, life imitates art and art imitates life. Set between London, Paris and the Amazon rainforest, it’s the story of a painter, Dominique, who hasn’t seen her father in more than three decades; he abandoned their family when she was six. As an adult, she travels to Venezuela to see the Angel Falls, but instead sees her father’s face “in the wildest place on Earth”. Back in London, she receives a letter from him, saying that he is dying. It trembles in her hand “as if she’s holding Angel Falls – a kilometre-long cataract shrunk to the size of a page … She unfolds it and it fills the room.” In time, she’ll tell herself: “I’m not mourning him – I’m mourning his second departure. He only got in touch to leave us.”

A gravitational force pulls her to Paris, where her father is living in the Latin Quarter. There she finds repressed memories: “37 dormant years suddenly awakened by the heat of his room”. Whenever she leaves him, she has to “shock herself back into the world”. What happened to her all those years ago? What happened to her mother and her sister, Vero, and why are they no longer a family?