The Binding: The most captivating novel of 2019

Because of the colours. Because the drab wintry world is so bright I can hardly bear it. Because the pain is closer and the taste of soot in my mouth is as solid as any food I’ve ever eaten. Because I can smell roots and things asleep and seeds waiting to grow.

But sometimes I am so glad to see the pain go away that if that were the only person I had ever helped it would still be worth it.’

She leant towards me. I smelt soap and glue and the leather of her apron.

‘You become each person you bind, Emmett … Just for a little while, you take them on. How can you do that if you want to sell them at a profit?’

was so cold I went into a sort of dream, where I was the marsh and the house as well as myself, where I was slippery wet wood and claggy mud …

Her eyes slid away. A timber creaked above, and suddenly the house felt fragile, as if the thick walls were nothing but a dream.

In the still silence of the workshop I concentrated on small things: the weight of the burnisher, the squeak of beeswax under my thumb.

The colours are so bright I feel like I’ve got a fever. Tiny details catch my eye: the lustre on a string of pearls, the starry bubbles in a glass of champagne, a beauty spot on a bare shoulder.

For a split second colour dances on the edge of my vision, a sense of light and space as if someone has lifted the lid of a box.