This is a big book. 1001 pages in fact, and while it shouldn't matter, I can't help but mention that. It's a whale of a book. But luckily, the story it tells is pretty epic too; an American heiress comes to live in a small Welsh coastal town that is dying, and decides to give away her £33million fortune- to the town, to renovate itself; to create a new-found-land. The story unfolds gradually through the episodic journeys of the main townspeople; slow Dai, who has a Christ-like vision; sullen teen mum Bethan, full of beauty that no one else can see, except for Dai; angry Rhys, the reluctant father of Bethan's daughter; Ruth and her small daughter who may be deaf, or not; town chiefs Emyr and Gewn, whose marriage unravels as only one of them can accept the changes that have been started.

There's some incredibly beautiful, and strange, writing, hidden like jewels in some very long passages of description, and it's worth the trawl through this monster to find the threads that entwine and paint a picture of a modern tragedy in the making. Ray's writing has matured considerably from her cult bestseller A Certain Age, written when she was 18 and the subject of dodgy older men's fantasy for her tales of underage sex and self-mutilation. Here, the pace is slow, deliberate, measured; Hardy-esque, if you like, entangled with moments of sudden beauty and brutality. Heiress Charlotte's own story is entwined with the town's, and her diary entries, written in an increasingly childish and disturbing hand, confuse and reveal in equal quantities, leading to a rather lovely ending on the brink of all sorts of possibilities.

Sounds like a mix of Dylan Thomas and John Cowper Powys - quite a tempting prospect!