It is a psychological thriller, with aspects of magical realism, and deals with a woman approaching menopause who develops paranormal abilities.

[1] The book is written in a multiple-narrative technique, alternating first-person accounts between Bernie Moon and her old school friend Katie Hemsworth.

But the murder of a woman in a nearby park re-awakens a latent talent, and she begins to experience "flashes" that allow her to enter - and in some cases, influence - the minds of others.

[2] She first uses this talent to identify a predator, Jim "Woody" Wood, a friend of Martin's, who she thinks may be the murderer of the woman in the park.

As Bernie starts to understand her powers, we find that she developed them as a child, and has suppressed them, following an early incident involving a boy called Adam Price, and a later one, in which a predatory schoolteacher took his own life.

Weeks pass, and Woody, increasingly dysfunctional, becomes convinced that he was drugged as part of a nefarious plan by women to emasculate and enslave men.

The backdrop of lockdown, the #MeToo campaign and the murder of Sarah Everard during the Covid pandemic has been cited as the context for Harris' writing of Broken Light.

[4] In an interview with Dr Louise Newson, Harris speaks about Bernie's superpowers as "a metaphor for the anger of women in later life who are too often silenced in art and reality".

[8]In an interview with The Guardian, Harris says she began the book after re-reading Carrie during lockdown, and during her cancer treatment, which she says was "like menopause, but worse".

[11] Author Ian Rankin named Broken Light as one of his best books of the year in the New Statesman, saying, "This is Angela Carter meets Carrie and it is done with dizzying aplomb.