Dark is the Morning by Rupert Thomson

Sometimes love isn’t where you belongIn a mountain village in the Abruzzo region of Italy, Gino, a troubled young man, realises that his childhood sweetheart Franca can give his life the happiness and stability he needs. They seem made for each other, and move to a remote house in the countryside - but there is something in Franca’s past that haunts Gino. Descending into pathological jealousy and resentment towards a married man who had been Franca’s lover, Gino is unable to stop himself imagining the worst, and embarks on a violent path that has catastrophic consequences.

Shifting between tenderness and paranoia, beauty and tragedy, this is an extraordinary novel from one of the UK’s most unpredictable and celebrated writers.