It is 1984, and Morris Spencer, reeling from news of a terminal diagnosis, checks into a crumbling cliff-top hotel on a small island off the English coast, intending to die quietly and unobtrusively, the same way he has lived his whole life.
At the same time, two young women arrive looking for work at the Green March: Natalie, quiet, contained and carrying scars both inside and out; Rachel, ablaze with life, mischief and possibility.
And then a dead girl washes up on the beach.
Morris finds himself drawn into the mystery of her murder, but far deeper into the lives of the people around him. There's quick-witted Miss Fathom, perhaps as old as the hotel itself and a source of wisdom and surprising vices; Louis, a furious, foul-mouthed artist; Dan, an ex-soldier who nurses a hidden love, and Lola, caught in the undertow of her past and the devastating secret she has never dared to share.
The Green March Hotel is a funny, eccentric, haunting and heartbreaking novel about the stubborn, battered, ridiculous, magnificent business of being alive. It's about the all-too-human monsters beneath the surface, but also the play of the light on the water and the ways in which we rescue one another. Above all it's a luminous reminder of why, at the end of the day, we keep on setting out our deckchairs in the rain.