A character study rather than a plot-driven narrative, The Hope Fault is demarcated into three distinct sections. No single encounter bears more resonance than another, reminiscent of everyday life where things only assume significance in retrospect. The middle section is a year-by-year account of Rosa’s life, moving backwards from her present day into her multilayered past as a mother, writer, lover, and wife. Though unanchored from the four days in which the story unfolds in real time, Iris’s life is a palimpsest of Rosa’s, with her mother’s decisions playing out in forgotten diaries and unacknowledged memories that are brought to the fore when the holiday house is unsheathed.

The family depicted in Farr’s pages is unusual but exceedingly relatable – one that may have been initially bound by legal and matrimonial ties but that remains interwoven by an intimacy forged through pain, loss, and understanding.