Information

Contact


Thomas McMullan

Fiction

Groundwater
(Bloomsbury, 2025)




Reviews

The FT: ‘Groundwater is a finely drawn portrait not only of a couple in crisis, but of a world on the verge of disaster. Though anchored in the ordinary, this nimble-footed novel wrestles with the “desperate and self-serving need to enshrine the self” —work, having children, even the creation of art — in the face of catastrophe.’ - Full review

The TLS: ‘..It is Thomas McMullan’s ability to cultivate this feeling - that all speech is somehow arbitrary, that all outcomes are somehow just a die’s role away - that gives this disquieting, suspenseful novel its strength.’ - Full review 

The Daily Mail: ‘McMullan’s shape-shifting novel is a masterclass in apprehension, exposing the fissures between an imagined life and its reality with stealthy power, and boldly upending reader expectations. Richly unsettling.’ - Full review

Buzz Magazine: ‘McMullan reveals himself to be a skilled cartographer of his main characters’ interior worlds, tracing the unspoken thoughts and feelings that lie beneath the surface, and the inarticulable and almost imperceptible gaps that open up within relationships.’ - Full review

  'Uncanny and unsettling, Groundwater is a masterful portrait of the fractious, shimmering webs underneath our not-so ordinary lives.’ 
- SOPHIE MACKINTOSH

'A ruthless and minutely observed reckoning with the stories, beliefs, and places we make to shelter from fear of death' 
- AMBER HUSAIN

'So dreamlike and yet so tense – a heady combination beautifully balanced by McMullan. This is a novel that gets right under your skin’ 
- ELLA FREARS

'As uncanny and fretful as a nightmare, Groundwater is nonetheless rooted in a totally real place and is populated with a cast of completely convincing characters. The Hell which is other people is meticulously painted here with humour, imagination and genuine poignancy' 
- AIDAN COTTRELL BOYCE

'Groundwater is an exquisite study of characters bound together by domestic life, compelled by both intimacy and discord, as their interactions gradually expose a deeply rooted desire for the feral' 
- CHRISTIANA SPENS

'Groundwater subtly plucks at the invisible strings that connect one person to another - the familial, the romantic, those of friendship, of dependency.' 
- VANESSA ONWUEMEZI

By the winner of the Betty Trask Prize - an atmospheric and powerfully menacing story about family, secrets and violence.

John and Liz have left the city behind to move to a remote house on the shores of the lake. Though the house is barely unpacked, Liz's sister, with her children and her husband, have come to visit for the August bank holiday weekend.

Over the course of a hot, slow weekend, tensions simmer; things go unsaid - between the two couples, between the two sisters. Their time together is punctured by visits from Jim, the solitary local warden for the area; and a group of students camping nearby draw closer and closer, finally infiltrating the house - and bringing their own tensions and hierarchies with them.

As the weekend draws to a close, the landscape reveals a violence that has long lain hidden - and the summer builds to its harrowing climax.

Taut and menacing, full of disquiet and tenderness, Groundwater is about the gulfs that lies between us and those we love - and the miraculous ways our deepest desires and fears manifest.

BUY HERE

The Last Good Man
(Bloomsbury, 2020)
WINNER OF THE BETTY TRASK PRIZE

'A Scarlet Letter for our times' 
MARGARET ATWOOD

'An extraordinary and disquieting work of imagination, and as original as any novel I’ve read in recent memory' 
ROB DOYLE

Duncan Peck has travelled alone to Dartmoor in search of his cousin. He has come from the city, where the fires are always burning.

In his cousin’s village, Peck finds a place with tea rooms and barley fields, a church and a schoolhouse. Out here, the people live an honest life – and if there’s any trouble, they have a way to settle it. They sit in the shadow of a vast wall, inscribed with strange messages. Anyone can write on the wall, anonymously, about their neighbours, about any wrongdoing that might hurt the community. Then comes the reckoning.

The stranger from the city causes a stir. He has not been there long before the village wakes up to the most unspeakable accusation; sentences daubed on the wall that will detonate the darkest of secrets.

A troubling, uncanny book about fear and atonement, responsibility and justice, and the violence of writing in public spaces, The Last Good Man dares to ask: what hope can we place in words once extinction is in the air?

BUY HERE

Short fiction


📚 Fiction

📚 Non-fiction

📚 Scripts

📚 Poetry

📚 Narrative design

📚 Editorial and mentoring


 Email
 Instagram