From the 'stunningly talented' author of Pig Tales and Breathing Underwater comes a new novel about a family haunted by their past. An exploration of loss and guilt, A Brief Stay with the Living is the story of a mother and her three grow-up daughters. Jeanne, the eldest, has moved to Argentina with her husband; Anne lives alone in Paris, but is in the throes of an unhappy affair with a married man; and Nore, the youngest, is in her first year at university but still living at home. Although not close, all four women are drawn together by an incident from their past - a secret that the story only gradually reveals.