TRESPASS

Rose Tremain (Chatto & Windus, £17.99)

In her previous book, The Road Home, Rose Tremain captured the immigrant experience with assured skill, winning the Orange prize. In her latest book, she is still pre-occupied with outsiders, but this time the setting is the unforgiving landscape of the Cevennes, southern France.

We begin with the arrival of Melodie, a ten-year-old who has had to move from Paris for her father’s career, and who is being bullied at school for her posh accent.

She wanders away from her school party, which is on an outing to learn about the area’s history of silk production. She discovers something and starts screaming, but we have to wait until the end of the book to find out what’s happened.

The second outsider is Anthony Verey, a formerly prosperous London antique dealer whose business is failing, and who is hoping to move near his sister Veronica. She lives in the Cevennes with her lover, Kitty, a watercolourist whom Anthony despises.

The snobbish Anthony is taken by an estate agent to Mas Lunel, an isolated farmhouse being sold by the alcoholic Aramon Lunel. Anthony doesn’t notice the crack through the middle, which has been disguised by cheap mortar, but Kitty points out that the view is spoilt by a modern bungalow. The bungalow is the home of Aramon’s sister Audrun, who dreams of taking revenge on her brother for the wrongs he has done her.

Meanwhile, Kitty dreams of killing Anthony, and we remember Melodie’s scream. Has someone been murdered? What happened, and whodunnit?

Tremain keeps us guessing almost until the end of this haunting story about what happens when foreigners intrude on a centuries-old landscape and culture.

l Rose Tremain is at the Oxford Literary festival on March 25. Box office 0870 343 1001, www.oxfordliteraryfestival.com