The Picnic - the long-awaited return to avant-garde fiction by the bestselling, prize-winning author Alex Pheby - tells two parallel stories about picnics. The first is the tale of a picnic gone wrong. Taking place in France - reimagining Maupassant's famous short story 'Partie de Campagne' as well as the celebrated 1936 Renoir film it inspired - it relates a Parisian family's fractious and sexually charged day out in the countryside. The second is the story of a picnic gone very wrong. Taking place in England, in another time (a time more-or-less like our own), with characters who might or might not be real (and might or might not be connected to the first) - and unfolding as a parable of innocence versus age - this outing heads towards a horrible and unexpected horror that, once read, is impossible to forget. Individually, each of these stories are exquisite. Combined, they create something even greater than the sum of their parts - and a novel of extraordinary, relentless power.