It is only Grace's father, a dedicated rationalist, who teaches her that the world is, in fact, well ordered and reasonable. For him the only truth is science, and, increasingly, he finds himself shut out by Anna as she draws Grace deeper and deeper into a strange world of myth and obsession.

Touching on extinction, madness, the breakdown of family, and, intriguingly, the way science can encourage contradictory readings of the world, Last Things will surely be hailed as one of the most assured and lyrical first novels of the year.