HEAP EARTH UPON IT

'Airless and gripping, Heap Earth Upon It perfectly captures what it's like to live under the weight of secrets. The family's yearning for a simpler future is expertly balanced with the darkness of their past. A devastating mix of hope and heartbreak, from one of Ireland's most exciting queer voices'
- Niamh Ni Mhaoileoin, author of Ordinary Saints  

'Despite the 1965 setting, the eerie atmosphere and fog-covered town feels more reminiscent of the misty scenes of older gothic classics like Wuthering Heights or Rebecca. Howarth has created a gorgeous yet tense tale of buried secrets'
- ABC Australia 

'A clever and mysterious book that never collapses into ordinariness, and possesses an eerie, liminal, orphaned quality that lingers in the mind'
- Sydney Morning Herald 

'Masterful... Heap Earth Upon It confirms Howarth as essential reading-a writer excavating how we bury feelings at our peril, and how queer desire persists, insists, even in the most inhospitable soil'
- Scene Magazine 

'A tense and claustrophobic novel with gothic atmosphere that seeps into your bones like fog. It's a fascinating look at mid-century rural Irish life, and a brutal exploration of the corrosive impact of shame and secrecy. Chloe Michelle Howarth knows her sapphic yearning!'
- Rachel Dawson, author of Neon Roses  

'Heap Earth Upon It is the perfect slow burn, an absorbing, multifaceted and uneasy novel, with inscrutable characters who shed layers until their fierce, flawed centres are revealed. Set in a 1960s rural Ireland that feels almost timeless, Howarth takes the 'a stranger comes to town' trope and weaves a mesmerising, shimmering web with it, deftly building and breaking tensions with a glance across a room, or a knock on a door. I was drawn in by the characters' quiet watchfulness and insularity, and the strong sense of place, but I was held captive by their rich interiorities, in particular Anna's simmering, swooning obsession that I felt must surely, soon, boil over... A triumph of a second novel'
- Emma van Straaten, author of This Immaculate Body  

'Dark, passionate and poised. A remarkable story of the way rural Ireland haunts and is haunted. Intense and thrilling'
- Soula Emmanuel, author of Wild Geese  

'An engrossing chronicle of restlessness and desire'
- Publishers Weekly 

'A chilling evolution of Howarth's voice and a reminder to us that intimacy can comfort and consume'
- GCN 

'An outstanding depiction of repression, obsession, loss and grief, and a fascinating study of four people who would be better off apart but are stuck together by circumstance and simply can't figure out how to break free'
- Irish Times 

'Formidable... Somewhat reminiscent of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. Heap Earth Upon It is an engrossing tale of broken families and passion that doggedly paces along the edge of violence'
- Readings 

'If you love Claire Keegan's stories, this is definitely one to get the juices flowing'
- Muddy Stilettos 

'Assured, poignant and beautiful. Howarth writes poetically about loss and love - Anna's thunderbolt moment when she first sees Betty singing at a party is particularly affecting - within an overhanging, unsettling Rebecca-esque tension. There is a cracking pace, too, helped by concise chapters, each of which is in first person from the perspective of one of the three elder O'Learys or Betty - a quartet of very unreliable narrators'
- Tom Tivnan. The Bookseller  

'

Heap Earth Upon It is a beautifully-written, haunting story of longing and grief told by characters that draw you into themselves and the dark secrets threaded through each of them. It's also a slow-burn mystery revealed chapter by chapter as we find out exactly how far each person will go to justify the stories they tell themselves'
- Fiona McPhillips, author of When We Were Silent  

'This tangled tale of sapphic yearning, gaslighting and sibling rivalry totally possessed me. Nobody does rumination quite like Howarth, whose intensely psychological prose had me gripped from the start, desperate to uncover the secrets the O'Leary family will do anything to bury. A tense, breathless novel with a twist that I haven't been able to stop thinking about'
- Seth Insua, author of Human, Animal  

'Haunting, elegant and quietly explosive. Howarth draws atmosphere from both emotional and physical landscapes, crafting a suspenseful and unforgettable story that unsettles in all the right ways'
- Ova Ceren (@excusemyreading), author of The Book of Heartbreak  

'This is a masterclass in suspense ... I could not put this down. The characters are brilliantly realised and I really admire Howarth as a writer for doing something completely different to Sunburn! I think it totally paid off and although there are similar themes of queerness and yearning, she creates such an atmospheric, spooky book that it's hard to not love it! A compulsive mystery that's threaded together so expertly, with language that sings from the page'
- Ross Kelly (@readsbyross)