Dora Bannan hopes for a new life when she moves her husband and their three children to the wild moorland. She finds a job teaching music at a progressive school, where she also enrolls the children-their fellow students the progeny of back-to-the-land bohemians. But when the school's elegant art teacher, Elisabeth Dahl, offers Dora a seductive alternative to her traditional domestic life, Dora finds that real change is far from easy. Meanwhile, her precocious only daughter, Cecilia, longs for a more traditional life, especially the formal education her new school can't offer. The girl becomes obsessed with her English teacher, James Dahl-an errant representative of the establishment she craves, and husband of the dangerous Elisabeth.
Twenty years later, the adult Cecilia brings her partner and daughters back home to the moors and her aging mother. Moving between past and present, You slowly reveals how far Dora and Cecilia let their private, impossible desires lead them-and how much further the consequences extend. Sensual, unnerving, and gripping, You is a novel about the lives we think we want, the choices we can't unmake, and the loves and losses we never forget.