Toby Hawk is a solitary boy in a family of Amazons. His mother is a painter on the brink of commercial success. Meanwhile, eighteen-year-old Toby's world remains a small, closed round of school, domesticity and surfing the Net at night. But everything changes when his mother takes up with a fascinating but enigmatic scientist, Roehm. 'A psychological thriller-cum-ghost story in the great neo-gothic European tradition'