Abigail Bergstrom’s bold, intense second novel opens with a miscarriage. The scene is raw and the reader is immersed. It ends with a devastating question: ‘hadn’t this been what she’d wanted?’ ‘She’ is Ines, the youngest of the Wyn sisters. The siblings are reunited when Ines returns to Wales with her childhood sweetheart following her miscarriage. They have not unexpected roles: Emma, the eldest, is a pseudo-mother to all; Dylan, the middle sister, is scathing; Ines, the prodigal daughter, is pandered to. Their reunion at a restaurant sets the tone: the sisters exchange playful barbs and looks imbued with subtexts. The threat of getting ‘stuck in the waterlogged marshlands of the past’ hangs over the meal. 

Several chapters are made up of flashbacks. These reveal not just the sisters’ issues with their mother, Gwen, but also Gwen’s strained relationship with her own mother, who told Gwen she was dying on the day Gwen gave birth to Emma. There are also chapters formatted as lists of information about the sisters: ‘Emma still allows herself one cigarette a week’; ‘Ines likes comfort, clear skin, lie-ins’.  

In the novel’s present day, we see Emma and her husband undergoing couples therapy. Emma’s visceral dislike of herself begins to make sense. A holiday in Portugal proves climactic, as the sisters have a frank conversation with their mother about an abortion she had in 1997 and the reasons why