Rumour and suspicion engulf an eerily fog-bound town as its residents begin to receive tickets promising passage across the mist-shrouded bay to the mysterious ‘other side’. For Alex and his family, this seems like the beginning of a great adventure, but as reports of a shadowy, half-glimpsed ship start to circulate, so too does the gossip and anxious speculation. This haunting, yet comic fable, is a beautiful and heartbreaking journey through memory, loss, and imagination.

Alan Bilton's extraordinary and ground-breaking second novel takes us into a magical world: it's at once comedic, exuberant and - in a strange way – elegiac … The novel's language is wildly delicious - however dark the matter it records, Bilton's prose has a virtuoso quality, presenting events as a kind of imaginative jeu-d'esprit” – Stevie Davies

“Engages the imagination, populated as it is with such a rich cast of characters and their sea of voices” – Cath Barton, Wales Arts Review.