When her father forced her to leave school, and cut off all her contact with the past and future, Mary Brodie's whole life became the narrow compass of her family's cold, comfortless house in a small Scottish town.

Her mean and ambitious father tyrannised over his timid, obliging wife, his cowed, overworked younger daughter and his spineless son. Four people were held in Brodie's merciless grip until, like a breath of the outside world Brodie so much despised, came the young Irishman in whom Mary found a forbidden freedom, and who brought to her mother and sister much needed release...

In the magnificent narrative tradition of The Citadel, The Stars Look Down and Cronin's other classic novels, Hatter's Castle is a great book by a much-loved author.