Other editions of book The House at the Edge of the World

John Venton's drunken fall from a cliff leaves his family with an embarrassing ghost. His twin children, Morwenna and Corwin, flee in separate directions as their mother, enraged by years of unhappy marriage, embraces merry widowhood. Only their grandfather finds solace in the crumbling house, endlessly painting their story onto a large canvas map. As the twins are drawn back to the house, they discover that their father's absence is part of the map's mysterious pull.

When I was eighteen, my father fell off a cliff. It was a stupid way to die. John Venton's drunken fall from a Devon cliff leaves his family with an embarrassing ghost. His twin children, Morwenna and Corwin, flee in separate directions to take up their adult lives. Their mother, enraged by years of unhappy marriage, embraces merry widowhood. Only their grandfather finds solace in the crumbling family house, endlessly painting their story onto a large canvas map. His brightly colored map, with its tiny pictures of shipwrecks, forgotten houses, saints and devils, is a work of his imagination, a collection of local myths and histo­ries. But it holds a secret. As the twins are drawn grudgingly back to the house, they discover that their father's absence is part of the map's mysterious pull. The House at the Edge of the World is the compellingly told story of how family and home can be both a source of comfort and a wholly destructive force. Cutting to the undignified half-truths every family conceals, it asks the questions we all must confront: who are we responsible for and, ultimately, who do we belong to?

Part mystery, part psychological drama, this is a darkly comic, unorthodox and thrilling debut.When I was eighteen, my father fell off a cliff. It was a stupid way to die. The Venton family are used to living with ghosts. The death of Morwenna's father near Thornton House, the beloved family home in Devon, prompts both Morwenna and her twin brother Corwin to flee in opposite directions. But connections to the house -­ and family -­ are not so easy to break. When, seventeen years after their father's death, Corwin returns, he will force Morwenna to confront a terrifying truth from the past, one that will destroy everything they thought they knew about their childhood home. The House at the Edge of the World breathlessly reveals how families tear themselves apart, and how they try to bind themselves together again.