A local girl drowns one night in summer on the shore. As a seething guilt settles over the teenagers of this fractured town, another girl narrates the experience of their hard partying, fiercely divided collective. Her parents’ marriage violently collapsing, her brother spiralling into increasing destructiveness, she sinks further back into the events leading up to this tragedy and the deeper fault-lines in the community.

Daringly experimental, Machine is a bold interrogation of gender, class and privilege, and the disintegration of identity in the shadow of trauma. A thrilling first novel from a unique talent, this is suspenseful, audacious, riveting literary fiction.