Winner of the Costa Novel Award 2021.
Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2021.

“A beautiful, powerful tale about real country life.” The Times

“Fierce, angry energy…. Claire Fuller’s impressive new novel opens by documenting, in fine and gravely moving detail, the last moments of an elderly woman.” The Guardian

“A brilliant and sly study of family in a rural English cottage,” Los Angeles Times

My fourth novel, Unsettled Ground won the Costa Novel Award 2021 and was shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2021. It is published in the UK, US, Lithuania, Spain, Catalonia, and The Netherlands It will also be published in Poland, France, Turkey, Italy, Holland, Hungary, Sweden, Russia, Slovenia, and Germany.

Twins Jeanie and Julius have always known they are different. At 51 years old, they still live with their mother, Dot, in rural isolation. The cottage they have rented for their whole lives is simultaneously their armour and their provider. Inside its walls they make music, in its garden they grow (and sometimes kill) everything they need to survive. To an outsider it looks like poverty but, to them, it is home.

But when Dot dies unexpectedly, the twins are exposed to a truth that has far-reaching repercussions, and as members of the local community start to make things difficult for the twins, Jeanie wonders how they will cope in a world which can be cruel and unyielding.

 A portrait of rural poverty in the 21^st Century, Unsettled Ground forces readers to see beyond the unsavoury, the unconventional, the ‘other’ and to recognise the thing that unites us all: the beating heart beneath. This is a story of resilience and hope, of homelessness and hardship, of love and survival, in which two marginalized but remarkable people take centre stage.

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Articles and interviews

I’ve written a lot of articles, answered many Q&As, and been interviewed for some wonderful authors for Unsettled Ground. Click here to see some of them.

Buy Unsettled Ground

Unsettled Ground is available to buy as a hardback (UK and US), ebook or audio book. Click here to buy in the UK. Click here to buy in the US. Click here to buy in Canada.

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