The Survivors

- Blurb -

Benjamin sees the shape of his two brothers trying to kill each other. It' s no worthy finale, but perhaps it' s also no surprise. How else had they expected this to end? Three brothers return to the family cottage by the lake where, more than two decades earlier, a catastrophe changed the course of their lives. Now, they are here to scatter their mother' s ashes. Benjamin, the middle son, drives the three of them down the old gravel road to the house, through a familiar landscape but also through time. Here they are as boys, tanned legs and hungry eyes, children left to themselves by remote parents; here they are as young men, estranged but bound together by the history that defines them, their lives spent competing for their father' s favour and their mother' s love in a household more like a minefield than a home. In the intervening years, Benjamin has grown increasingly untethered from reality, frozen in place as life carries on around him. And between the three brothers hums a dangerous current. What really happened that summer day when everything was blown to pieces? The Survivors is the tale of a family falling apart and a chronicle of a mind unravelling in the wake of a tragedy, both a coming-of-age novel and a reckoning with a deeply buried past. Written with singular elegance and the drive of a suspense novel, its ending will leave you marvelling at what the best fiction can achieve.