In the basement

One could be forgiven for thinking that after the succès de scandale of her previous novel, The Bride Stripped Bare (2005), Nikki Gemmell’s next novel would also address the permutations of sexual desire, particularly since the title of her latest novel is The Book of Rapture and the cover is a riot of fleshy red and purple. This time round, though, Gemmell is more interested in exploring religious, scientific and familial rapture. There is barely a skerrick of sex within the deckle-edged pages.

In an unnamed country in an unspecified time, three drugged young children are smuggled into a hotel basement. They are ‘like tiny wooden boats in a wind-tossed sea, swivelling, unanchored, lost’. But it turns out that this prison is also a refuge: their scientist parents are being held hostage, and the children have been sequestered for their own safety.