Idle Grounds: A Novel
Krystelle Bamford
Feb 2025 · Sold by Simon and Schuster
star
1 review
Ebook
208
Pages
family_home
Eligible
info
About this ebook
Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for First Fiction
Finalist for Scotland’s National Book Award for Debut Fiction
“This debut novel is superb. Idle Grounds is a remarkable, preternatural study of a family reckoning with its own history … Bamford’s arresting novel briefly unveils the strangeness [of childhood] once again.” —The Telegraph
In this mesmerizing, sharply funny story about a family in decline, set in 1989 New England, a group of young cousins wander deep into the woods their grandparents once owned—finding that the farther they go, the stranger their surroundings become.
As always with these things it started with a birthday party.
Lingering at the edge of a family party, a troop of cousins loses track of the youngest child among them. With their parents preoccupied with bickering about decades-old crises, the children decide to investigate themselves—to the rickety chicken coop, the barn and its two troublesome horses, and into the woods that once comprised their late grandmother’s property. The more the children search, and the deeper they walk, the more unsettling the woods become and the more lost they are, caught between their aunt’s home in the present day, their parents’ childhood home just through the trees, and the memory of the house their grandmother grew up in. Soon, what began as a quest for answers gives way to a journey that undermines everything they’ve been told about who they are, where they came from, and what they deserve.
Told in the young cousins’ collective voice, in a mode that moves between childhood memory, New England Gothic, and a Reagan-era Nancy Drew, Idle Grounds is an “unsettling and sharply funny” (The Guardian) exploration of the interior lives of children and a gripping meditation on birthright, decline, and the weight of family history. A fable of the distortions of privilege and the impossibility of keeping secrets hidden, this is a novel about straying from home—only to come back unraveled, unsettled, and irrevocably changed.
Finalist for Scotland’s National Book Award for Debut Fiction
“This debut novel is superb. Idle Grounds is a remarkable, preternatural study of a family reckoning with its own history … Bamford’s arresting novel briefly unveils the strangeness [of childhood] once again.” —The Telegraph
In this mesmerizing, sharply funny story about a family in decline, set in 1989 New England, a group of young cousins wander deep into the woods their grandparents once owned—finding that the farther they go, the stranger their surroundings become.
As always with these things it started with a birthday party.
Lingering at the edge of a family party, a troop of cousins loses track of the youngest child among them. With their parents preoccupied with bickering about decades-old crises, the children decide to investigate themselves—to the rickety chicken coop, the barn and its two troublesome horses, and into the woods that once comprised their late grandmother’s property. The more the children search, and the deeper they walk, the more unsettling the woods become and the more lost they are, caught between their aunt’s home in the present day, their parents’ childhood home just through the trees, and the memory of the house their grandmother grew up in. Soon, what began as a quest for answers gives way to a journey that undermines everything they’ve been told about who they are, where they came from, and what they deserve.
Told in the young cousins’ collective voice, in a mode that moves between childhood memory, New England Gothic, and a Reagan-era Nancy Drew, Idle Grounds is an “unsettling and sharply funny” (The Guardian) exploration of the interior lives of children and a gripping meditation on birthright, decline, and the weight of family history. A fable of the distortions of privilege and the impossibility of keeping secrets hidden, this is a novel about straying from home—only to come back unraveled, unsettled, and irrevocably changed.
Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Award for First Fiction
Finalist for Scotland’s National Book Award for Debut Fiction
“This debut novel is superb. Idle Grounds is a remarkable, preternatural study of a family reckoning with its own history … Bamford’s arresting novel briefly unveils the ...
Discover more
Ratings and reviews
1 review
About the author
Krystelle Bamford’s work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, bath magg, Under the Radar, The Scores, and numerous anthologies including the Best New British and Irish Poets 2019–2021. She is a 2019 Primers poet and was awarded a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award. Raised in the US, she now lives in Edinburgh with her partner and children. Idle Grounds is her first novel.
Krystelle Bamford’s work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, bath magg, Under the Radar, The Scores, and numerous anthologies including the Best New British and Irish Poets 2019–2021. She is a 2019 Primers poet and was awarded a Scottish Book Trust New Writers Award. Ra...
Rate this ebook
Tell us what you think.
Reading information
Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.
