Tab Black is twenty-seven, famous, and coming apart. The vocalist of Shifter, a British indie band at its peak, she is plagued by episodes of lost time in which she acts - and apparently commits acts - she cannot remember. Compromising photographs have surfaced. Her partner Jay, the band's other force, oscillates between forgiveness and threat.

Fleeing Jay and a self she no longer recognises, Tab follows a trail of online clues to the island of Elara - a defunct luxury hotel now home to a Moon-worshipping commune. She surrenders her old self, is renamed Kallichore, and falls into the warmth of island life.

But the life Tab left behind has a way of finding her.

A Gothic novel about the self as contested territory, Elara marks Venetia Welby as a novelist of exceptional gifts.