Skin

Skin is inventive, compelling and deeply moving - a story of loss and recovery, of wild swimming and identity from a rising star of British fiction.

London, 1985. Joe, father to 11-year-old Matty, has disappeared and nobody will explain where he's gone, or why.

In the long, hot summer that follows, Matty's hunt for Joe leads to the ponds at Hampstead Heath. Beneath the water, there is a new kind of freedom. Above the water, a welcoming community of men offer refuge from an increasingly rocky home life.

Fourteen years later, a new revelation sees Matty set off alone in a campervan, driving westwards through Ireland, swimming its wild loughs and following the scant clues left behind about Joe. The trip takes a dangerous turn, and Matty is forced to rely on the kindness of strangers. But safety comes at a price, and with desire and fear running high, the journey turns into an explosive, heart-rending reckoning with the past.

'Emotive ... A sweeping coming-of-age narrative whose on-point themes of gender and sexuality are embedded in evocative descriptions of London during the 1980s, and of boomtime Ireland a decade later.'
Mail Online

'A writer of frankly alarming talent.'
Robert MacFarlane, author of Mountains of the Mind

'This evocative and sensitive tale is grounded by the authentic complexity of its characters ... Inspired.'
Daily Mail

'I felt a real sense of loss when I read the last page. I didn't want this book to end. Andrew's writing is tender, beautiful, perfectly weighted. A writer we are immensely lucky to have.'
Daisy Johnson