Mood and atmosphere fuel this novel, which segues between two stories set almost a century apart, with a narrator looking back from an ever further future point. Silences and ellipses abound: characters are mired in confusions driven by repression and assumptions, and desire bubbles up and around attempts to constrain it. At the centre is a farm - a working complex dominated by fear in the past, a lonely ruin in the present. In both, characters forge lives, bringing some of themselves to the place. It feels slight in the end, despite the weight of the story, like a slice or something fleeting.