From the Booker Prize-winning author of Wolf Hall comes "a giddy cocktail of horror and gleeful anticipation" (Kathryn Harrison, The New York Times).
Evelyn Axon and her daughter, Muriel, barricaded in their once-respectable house, are surrounded by years of garbage--and plenty of family secrets, to boot. They completely baffle Isabel Field, the social worker assigned to help them. But Isabel has troubles of her own: an elderly father who wanders the streets, and a lover, Colin, who wants her to run away with him. But Colin has three horrible children and a shrill wife who is pregnant again--how is he going to run anywhere?
As Isabel wrestles with her own problems, a horrible secret grows in the darkness of the Axon household. When at last it comes to light, the result is by turns hilarious and terrifying.