The High House
JESSIE GREENGRASS
(SWIFT press, 288 PP, £8.99)
Tablet bookshop price £8.09 • tel 020 7799 4064

To the homestead of the title (located on the Norfolk coast, I should judge), at some point in the not-too-distant future, and in flight from environmental catastrophe, come Caro and her pre-teen half-brother, Pauly. Their father, and Pauly’s mother, Francesca, are prominent eco-activists who have just been swept away to their deaths in a storm that has ravaged the American East Coast.

Fortunately, Francesca turns out to have hatched a plan against this emergency: the purchase of her Norfolk hideaway, powered by its own tidepool and generator, sustained by a barn-full of tinned food and medical supplies – this includes a supply of morphine – and, in the presence of an ancient local (“Grandy”) and his granddaughter Sally, two custodians who know the ropes and can help their visitors survive.