Author(s): Rose Mulready

Fiction

The birch is a quiet tree. It listens. Eight-year-old James and his family live in a beautiful house perched on the edge of a forest, within the curve of a giant glass dome. They circle each other like fish in a fishbowl. Aquila - James's philandering father and renowned artist - prepares to unveil his latest and most shocking work to the world. Suzanne, James's mother, medicates herself against a rising tide of loneliness and memory. James seeks refuge from the adult world in his drawings and dreams. But when James's sister, Charity, returns home, she brings with her a visitor who will shake their fragile order to its foundations. Atmospheric and poetic, The Bonobo's Dream is speculative fiction at its finest, probing the limits of what it means to be human in a world spun from myths and castles in the air.