In his new novel, the award-winning Scottish author and two-time Booker Prize nominee Andrew O'Hagan tells the story of two people caught between memory and forgetfulness - a powerful outcry against war and the societies that have enabled it, and a multi-layered, virtuoso narrative about family, loss, secrets, and forgiveness. In her youth, Anne Quirk was an extraordinary photographer, but today she is left with only flashes of light from the past. However, her progressing dementia seems to protect her from particularly unwelcome memories. When her beloved grandson Luke, a captain in the British Army, returns from Afghanistan to Scotland, they travel to Blackpool - the place where Anne once had her darkroom. It is there that long-buried secrets gradually begin to surface.