Snakes

The Snakesis many thingsa parable and an ancient drama where a fathers greed devours his children, a police procedural, an avid take on tabloid venality, and a bitter comedy, superbly observed, where behind a womans eyes she is all movement inside herself, like a wasp in a glass. I admit that Im still shaken by parts of this novel. Sadie Jones writes with pitiless aplomb and corrosive intelligence.Louise ErdrichA chilling page-turner and impossible to put down, THE SNAKES is Sadie Jones at her best: breathtakingly powerful, brilliantly incisive, and utterly devastating.The new novel by Sadie Jones tells thetense and violent story of the Adamsons, a dysfunctional English family, with exceptional wealth, whose darkest secrets come back to bite them. Set mostlyin rural France during contemporary times,THE SNAKES isan all-consuming read and a devastating portrait of how money corrupts, and how chance can deal a deadly hand.THE SNAKES exposes the damage wreaked by parents on children as observed by a new member of the family, Dan, a mixed-race man from Peckham who marries Bea, the daughter who refuses to take any of her fathers filthy money. But when Beas brother Alex (who runs a shabby hotel in Paligny, France) dies suddenly in unexplained circumstances, the confusion and suspicion which arise bring other dark family secretsand violenceto the surface. And none of the family, even the good members, go untouched.