Original, exhilarating and surprisingly tender, this story of two people and the life they inhabit is a tour de force.
For here was a case where doctoring absolutely was not just pills and sympathy. This was complex. This was about the whole person, no, about three people. This was going to be a challenge.
Philip and Sue, in their mid-20s, near the start of their working lives, have moved to Eden Grove, to a two-up-two-down individually designed quality residence in a small town for the circle of a year.
Philip is a locum in a nearby GP surgery, and Sue commutes an hour each day to her job in an art gallery. On the surface, their life together is unremarkable, but around them and within them is a kaleidoscope of complex, intersecting worlds.
When Philip struggles with his new patients - a child with ADHD whose mother doesn't trust doctors, an elderly woman who insists on experiencing every stage of her body's decline - and when Sue decides to curate a new exhibition with a crucial emptiness at its heart, they both find themselves overstepping the boundaries of their professional lives.
As the year turns, and their risky choices lead them into an uncertain future, the young couple are forced to confront questions that surround us all: how much do we really know about the place we live in, or ourselves? What does it mean to belong? And, in the end, who is it that we can we rely on?
