'I kissed my father once, when he was sleeping.'

Nevis Gow is fifteen. For eleven years he has lived in a van with his father Marshall, travelling the country. They don't need people or school or jobs. All they need is each other. But Nevis doesn't just love his father, he's in love with him too.

Until one day Marshall crashes the van and everything changes. Stranded on a remote Highland farm amid a family overshadowed by grief, Marshall tries to steer them back to normality while Nevis fights to keep things the way they were. Soon, though, he comes to realise that nothing about his lost life in the van was quite as it seemed.

In Nevis's meticulously detailed record of events, lines blur between love and obsession, reality and wish-fulfilment, dreams and memory. Shocking, funny and poignant, this is the first novel by a young writer of remarkable talent.

Reviews

'Emily Mackie's wonderful novel is a rare thing, delicate and dangerous at the same time. The plot is raw and shocking, the slow reveal is strikingly accomplished, the detail of the writing is fine and funny and precise'

Tessa Hadley

'I have never read anything quite like AND THIS IS TRUE. As disturbing as it is compelling, it is a wonderfully taut tale of confinement and escape, of difficult loves and conflicting emotions peopled by characters you won't meet anywhere else.'

Gerard Woodward

'A strange, intense story of love and betrayal, beautifully imagined and written; Nevis’s voice will haunt you'

Kate Saunders, The Times

'Irresistibly quirky... expertly mined with narrative explosions...in Nevis Gow, Emily Mackie has created one of current fiction's freshest funniest oddballs'

Justine Jordan, Guardian

'Superbly unsettling...a gripping, moving tale of a little boy lost.'

Mary Fitzgerald, Observer