Dying at twenty four is unnatural. But that's what Simon did, leaving his sister in shock, alone and haunted by the past. In the harsh but strangely comforting anonymity of Glasgow, she moves dazedly from artists' studios to smoky pubs, clutching at comfort wherever she can find it, in drink or sex. Her already fractured world seems now to have been torn apart, as she struggles with the question of whether secrets are better exposed or buried. But an unexpected trip to Orkney at last offers a change in her tense and frightening world. NEGATIVE SPACE is a harshly honest yet beautiful novel, and one of the most powerful debuts of recent times.

'Strachan has a perfect eye for the small detail of suffering . . . The intimate, first-person voice drifts between past and present tense with astonishing effectiveness . . . This is a complex, mature novel with thought-provoking, well-crafted themes' Independent on Sunday