The Blackberry Season - in just one hard, sharp season a family changes its shape.
"I had not asked for such a blood sisterhood" ('Blackberrying' by Plath).
On the day fifteen year old Isobel buries her grandmother, she has to leave her modest life in a Scottish fishing village and step into a stranger's life - a wealthy urban London life. She has to insinuate herself into a stranger's home and unfortunately that stranger is her father and his home is already full of his 'real' family - second wife Stella (perfect and sad and lied to) and their loved and loving nine year old daughter, Jessica. It is a strange, closed unit and there seems to be no place for Isobel. It was easy when her father wasn't there, she could make of him a fairytale fantasy figure but in real life she finds him cold and remote, someone who avoids talking to her so that he can avoid telling her ugly things.