Talking of the Dead was the fourth novel published in 1996 by British author Helen Dunmore, a "chilling tie of sibling rivalry and sudden infant death", and has been described as one of the best novels in the 1990s.

[1] Nina, an uninhibited London-based photographer, is visiting her sister Isabel in Sussex.

It is the hottest summer on record as Isabel struggles with her new-born baby Antony following a hysterectomy.

In St Ives, Cornwall twenty-five years ago tragedy struck the sisters when their brother Colin died of sudden infant death syndrome, from which their mother never recovered.

Isabel gradually descends into madness as Nina worries that that history may repeat itself...