This is a pastoral tale, a war story, a love story, a modern tragedy. It is a verse novel of great subtlety and power, the author's thirteenth book of poetry.
The Scarring follows the fortunes of a married couple - propertied, young, beautiful, in love, sexually enraptured, the Mitchells seem the perfect couple. But their separation through war sows the seeds of their eventual destruction, the inevitability of the unfolding tragedy heightened by the form the narrative takes: we are carried along by the gently insistent poetic rhythms, hand in glove with the substance of the story.
