Ever since Aldous Jones careened over the handlebars of his bicycle in 1955 and landed next to farmer Evans's first field, it has been a tradition for him to take his family camping in Wales. Aldous starts to feel that a certain symbiosis has developed between their North London home and the Welsh village that they only ever see in August. As the years pass, Aldous's family idyll starts to disintegrate and the farm becomes a place drenched in memory. A stunning and unforgettable novel, Woodward's beautiful prose skilfully turns the mesmerising story of one family's happiness and grief into an elegy for the charms of post-war English family life and the child's-eyeview that failed to see darkness lurking behind the jollity. From the wayward genius of an eldest son, Janus, to the exuberant, witty but ultimately unstable Colette - all the characters in this book will haunt the reader long after they have put it down.