Shortlisted for the Booker Prize

In The Essence of the Thing, Madeleine St John takes us deep into the territory of the human heart.

Nicola should never have stepped out to buy that pack of cigarettes, because the man she discovers in her living room on her return is not the Jonathan she has been sharing her life with for the past six years. This new Jonathan, suddenly tired of people peering into his soul, decides that she should move out. Now a shocked, grief-stricken Nicola is forced to set out on the course that will take her from the hellish end of an affair to the essence of the thing.

Wry, witty and exquisite, here is another masterpiece from the author of The Women in Black.

'he Essence of the Thing grabs the reader's sympathy and attention from the startling first pages and doesn't let go.' Newsday