Heap Earth Upon It, Chloe Michelle Howarth
Heap Earth Upon It, Chloe Michelle Howarth
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Heap Earth Upon It

Author: Chloe Michelle Howarth

Narrator: various narrators, Máiréad Tyers, Chris Walley, Peter Claffey, Phillippa Dunne

Unabridged: 8 hr 55 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/04/2026

Synopsis

Chloe Michelle Howarth of the bestselling novel Sunburn offers a new take on sapphic obsession, for fans of All Our Wives Under the Sea, Mrs. S, Biography of X, and Organ Meats.In this follow-up to the award-winning Sunburn, a claustrophobic tale of obsession, family, and identity …In January, 1965, the growing town of Ballycrea has four new residents.The O’Leary siblings arrive in their new village under suspicious circumstances. Desperate to make a new start and leave their troubled life behind, the O’Learys offer few, contradicting details about their past.As they slowly settle in to town, the siblings are taken under the wing of Betty and Bill Nevan, a wealthy couple in their forties who have always wanted children. However, as one O’Leary sister grows close to Betty, lines are crossed and their intense relationship becomes difficult to define. All the while, the O’Leary’s buried secrets keep bubbling up, threatening to ruin their new future.Gothic, lush, and suspenseful, Chloe Michelle Howarth spins a tangled web that leaves you wondering who to trust until the very end.

About Chloe Michelle Howarth

Chloe Michelle Howarth is best known for her debit novel Sunburn and is an Irish writer who grew up in the West Cork countryside. The landscapes, culture, and people of rural Ireland have served as an inspiration for her writing. She first became interested in literature as a teenager, and in 2015, she moved to Dublin to study English, media, and cultural studies in IADT Dun Laoghaire. 

Reviews

Goodreads review by Kat on June 08, 2025

UPDATE #2: i’m throwing up she’s done it again 😩😩😩😩😩😩😩😩 UPDATE: the bookstore employees no longer have to be scared of me, I GOT AN ARC i’m seated. the bookstore employees are scared and asking me to leave because it ‘hasn’t even released yet’ but i’m simply too seated.......more

Goodreads review by Marcus on November 25, 2025

[4.5 stars] Admittedly, I went into Heap Earth Upon It with apprehension. Sunburn was a five-star read and one of my all-time favorite reads. Chloe Michelle Howarth perfectly encapsulated queer yearning and repression with her beautiful prose. I feared that whatever she released next wouldn't live u......more

Goodreads review by Julie on November 30, 2025

Anna diva you would’ve loved sertraline......more

Goodreads review by Léa on October 16, 2025

Chloe Michelle Howarth is such a master at her craft, I'm endlessly floored by her writing and Heap Earth Upon It was NO different. This book is stylistically very different to Sunburn but in a way, that makes the story all that more haunting and suspenseful but still so full of yearning! At once a f......more

Goodreads review by katarina on October 09, 2025

Heap Earth Upon It is a perfectly executed family drama rooted in one sibling’s obsession. The lingering secrets that haunt the narrative keep you intrigued, with each nugget of information you start to piece together the past of these characters. The different POVs in this book were all so compelli......more

Quotes

“I lost myself in Chloe Michelle Howarth’s strange and startling second novel. It’s a deeply affecting tapestry of gothic landscapes and virtuosic, character driven prose. As it haunted me, Heap Earth Upon It will haunt you too.” Lucy Rose, author of The Lamb 

“Heap Earth Upon It is the perfect slow burn, an absorbing, multifaceted and uneasy novel, with inscrutable characters who shed layers until their fierce, flawed centers are revealed. Set in a 1960s rural Ireland that feels almost timeless, Howarth takes the ‘a stranger comes to town’ trope and weaves a mesmerizing, shimmering web with it, deftly building and breaking tensions with a glance across a room, or a knock on a door. I was drawn in by the characters’ quiet watchfulness and insularity, and the strong sense of place, but I was held captive by their rich interiorities, in particular Anna’s simmering, swooning obsession that I felt must surely, soon, boil over…A triumph of a second novel.” Emma van Straaten, author of This Immaculate Body 

“Airless and gripping, Heap Earth Upon It perfectly captures what it’s like to live under the weight of secrets. The family’s yearning for a simpler future is expertly balanced with the darkness of their past. A devastating mix of hope and heartbreak, from one of Ireland’s most exciting queer voices.” Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin, author of Ordinary Saints 

“Assured, poignant, and beautiful. Howarth writes poetically about loss and love—Anna’s thunderbolt moment when she first sees Betty singing at a party is particularly affecting—within an overhanging, unsettling Rebecca-esque tension. There is a cracking pace, too, helped by concise chapters, each of which is in first person from the perspective of one of the three elder O’Learys or Betty—a quartet of very unreliable narrators.” Tom Tivnan, author of The Bookseller

“A tense and claustrophobic novel with gothic atmosphere that seeps into your bones like fog. It’s a fascinating look at mid-century rural Irish life, and a brutal exploration of the corrosive impact of shame and secrecy. Chloe Michelle Howarth knows her sapphic yearning!” Rachel Dawson, author of Neon Roses 

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