Under the Mountain
  • Published: 1 September 2010
  • ISBN: 9781409069386
  • Imprint: Cornerstone Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 384

Under the Mountain

Formats & editions
EBook
1 Sep 2010
Paperback
1 Jun 2009
Buy from…
Amazon Apple Books Google Play Kobo Booktopia eBooks.com

In the bestselling tradition of Maggie O'Farrell and Esther Freud.

It is the blazing summer of 1981 and Catherine is laid low by childhood illness. Stuck inside her family's sprawling Victorian mansion at the foot of a Highland mountain, she can only look down into the garden and observe the goings-on upon the lawn.

Sam and Rosa, her elder teenage cousins, have come to spend the school holiday in this seemingly idyllic setting, and Catherine savours the brief visits Sam makes to her room. But when Rosa falls in love with Humberto, a young Spanish man camping in the grounds of the house, and Catherine witnesses a violent attack on Sam's beloved dog, the events of that summer take on a darker hue.

Under the Mountain is a fiercely intelligent and beautifully written novel about domestic politics and first loves, and in an unforgettable narrative that is both moving and haunting, Sophie Cooke powerfully exposes hidden inner lives and reveals the sometimes devastating consequences of love and the lies it can tell.
  • Published: 1 September 2010
  • ISBN: 9781409069386
  • Imprint: Cornerstone Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 384
Categories:
Share…

About the author

Sophie Cooke

Sophie Cooke was awarded a New Writer's Bursary by the Scottish Arts Council and was runner up for the MacAllan/Scotland on Sunday Short Story Award for the opening pages of The Glass House. She lives in the East Side of Edinburgh and is currently working on her second book.

Praise for Under the Mountain

A wise, ambitious and involving work flowering in psychological insight, it leaves less nuanced epics in its shade

Kevin MacNeil, author of The Stornoway Way

It is Cooke's dual ability to pick apart beautifully the daytime details of cosy family life while also exploring much loftier themes of God, truth, memory and love that set her aside as a mature, intensely emotional and intelligent writer

Sunday Times

Sublime writing... Cooke is excellent on unspoken family tensions and her characters' psychological motivations always ring true with a density that recalls Virginia Woolf. Of the younger generation of Scottish writers being published now, Cooke is one of the best.

Scottish Review of Books

This is a complex, clever novel which on the whole succeeds in its high ambitions

Time Out