‘There’s no better metaphor for a dangerous relationship than the lonely, daring, deadly sport of freediving. In Storm and Grace, Kathryn Heyman skewers the Western world’s teachings to young women about love. We watch, holding our breath, dread building, as Grace dreams and self-deludes her way through Storm’s star performance of love. The catch, the binding, the subtle brutality, the careful paring away of supports and self-belief – all are laid out in a beguiling setting of tropical beauty and lavish affectionate display. But a love that puts you beyond the reach of ordinary humanity is no love at all, and Grace’s devotion takes her down deep, to a place of breathless quiet and razor-fine margins for error.

‘Heyman deploys, maintains and contains a magnificent rage in this novel of modern courtship and age-old power games.’

Margo Lanagan, author of Sea Hearts

‘Thrilling, sensual and unsparing, Storm and Grace taps the deep reservoirs of myth to reveal the secret violence that moves just beneath the surface of the everyday.’

James Bradley, critic and author of Clade

‘Storm and Grace took my breath away in all of its parts: the poetry of its sentences; the sensory richness of its moments; the depths and turns of its story; and the powerful revelation of whose voices had carried me to its end. Both beguiling and brutal, it navigates an extraordinary balance between an exquisite delicacy and the potentially vast and pummelling forces of any extremity.’

Ashley Hay, author of The Railwayman’s Wife