Bodies of Water is an exercise in quiet, slow-building horror. It moves confidently between two eras in the life of Wakewater House, from the Victorian world of hydrotherapy and female ‘hysteria’ to modern London, where its protagonist, Kirsten, walks, lonely and wakeful in her converted apartment. As the novel moves inexorably forward, and we discover more about the history of Wakewater House and its inhabitants, the ‘real’ world of the twenty-first century seems to dissolve