Author(s): Daisy Lafarge

Novel

From an award-winning talent comes a mesmeric debut novel about a young woman falling under the spell of an older man.

Frances is a young English woman spending a summer volunteering in rural France, hoping that picking vegetables and making honey will distract her from a scandal that drove her out of Paris, her degree unfinished and her sense of self unmoored.

At Noa Noa, named for the ranch owner's adventures in Tahiti, she comes under the influence of Paul, a charismatic, dominant older man. As his hold over her tightens, Frances watches her plans fragment, and she finds herself entangled in a strange, uneven relationship, all the while reasoning: he must know best what's good for me; after all, he's older than me.

A novel about the quiet horror of passivity and the cage of being 'good', Paul introduces a writer of extraordinary perspicacity and lyricism.

Author Biography: Daisy Lafarge was born in Hastings and studied at the University of Edinburgh. Her poetry collection Life Without Air (Granta Books, 2020) was shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize. Her visual work has been exhibited in galleries such as Tate St Ives and Talbot Rice Gallery. Paul, the winner of a Betty Trask Award, is her debut novel.