Aardvark Bureau signs Farr's The Hope Fault

Aardvark Bureau has signed a novel about "family and fault lines" by Tracy Farr entitled The Hope Fault.

Jane Aitken, m.d. of Gallic Books and Aardvark Bureau, acquired world English Language rights (excluding Australia and New Zealand) to the title from Fremantle Press in Western Australia.

The Hope Fault is a celebration of the complexities of family and a meditation on the fault lines that threaten to unsettle our lives, according to the publisher. In Cassetown, Geologue Bay, Iris and her extended family – her ex-husband and his wife and their new baby; her son and her best friend’s daughter – gather on a midwinter long weekend, to pack up the family holiday house now that it has been sold. They are together for one last time, one last weekend, one last party. As the house is stripped bare, their secrets – and the complex, messy nature of family relationships – will be revealed.

Farr’s debut novel, The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt, was shortlisted for the Barbara Jefferis Award and the Western Australian Premier’s Book Awards and longlisted for Australia’s most prestigious prize, the Miles Franklin Award. It was published last year by Aardvark Bureau in the UK and the USA.

Aitken said: "Tracy Farr is a writer of great talent and we are so pleased to have acquired her second novel which, as its geological title implies, is rich with all that bubbles away beneath the surface of family life. Tracy's innovative narrative structure allows her to capture both the events of a rainy weekend and one hundred years of family history."

Farr said: "I love and admire the writers and books published by Aardvark Bureau, and I’m thrilled to have my second novel join their list."