Cold City

A stunning debut novel uses speculative fiction to explore mental illness and our darkest feelings about our family

Two weeks after his death, Susan McPherson sees her father on the street in Glasgow. Not long after, she takes an overdose and is committed to a psychiatric institution. There, she is given a cocktail of drugs and soon finds herself moving between the reality of hospital and an alternate city, permanently covered in snow and ice. In her new world her gay brother, Jamie, is now married to Claire. The country is dominated by militant pagan groups and Christian fundamentalism is on the rise, led by the charismatic preacher, McLean. Susan is befriended by Raj, a mysterious man who creates paintings of wolves and Norse legends. As Susan is drawn into the struggles and relationships of this new parallel world, her grip on the "first world" loosens further. Can she resolve the crises in the ice-bound city in order to return to reality? For fans of Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time, Scarlett Thomas's The End of Mr Y, and Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go.