The Beacon
By Susan Hill
Vintage £6.99, 154 pages
FT Bookshop price: £5.59

For more than 20 years after her beloved father died, May Prime stayed on in the Beacon, the family’s remote farmhouse, to care for her decrepit mother. A year away at university in London had ended with nightmares that ceased only upon her return to the Beacon, so May’s only bid for independence was curtailed.

May’s gentle older brother and indulged younger sister both settled locally while Frank, the curiously withdrawn and youngest of the siblings, fled to London, forged a swift career in Fleet Street and married into wealth. A gradual sense of menace in Hill’s taut novella builds with the anticipation of what, precisely, Frank then did that made him the family pariah.

In essence, the story is simple and familiar. Its sharp edge derives from the extreme pathologies of its principal characters – Frank’s shameless, amoral self-interest, and May’s supine quiescence – and the hanging doubt as to who, ultimately, holds the greater claim to truth.