Description
Book SynopsisShortlisted for the NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS 2017
2017 PULITZER PRIZE Finalist for Fiction
TIME Top Ten Novels of 2016
''It might be the best American novel about a middle-class family since Jonathan Franzen''s The Corrections'' Independent
''Exceptional, haunting, distinctive... [It] resembles the work of Anne Tyler, intertwining grief and love... Intimate and panoramic'' The Sunday Times
''Dreadfully sad and hilariously funny. Literature of the highest order'' Peter Carey
Universal and essential, the heart-breaking story of an ordinary American family shaped by tragedy
Michael''s father walked into the woods one day, and out of his family''s life for ever. Yet he and his brother and sister see it less as a tragedy in their past and more as a forewarning of the future. For Michael - smart, brilliant, so alive and vital - feels the darkness that drew their father away and how, given the chance, it might take the whole family. He wants to save them - but can he save himself?
Trade ReviewPublisher's description. How much can any of us do to save those we love from themselves? What does the dark legacy of guilt do to a person, to a relationship, to a family? Achingly poignant and sharply witty, this portrait of a single tragedy rippling across many lives has all the makings of an American classic. * Penguin *
Beautiful, elegant, harrowing... This is a book that makes you eager, once more, for the complications of the world -- Colum McCann
This beautiful, tragic novel will haunt you for the rest of your life... Michael is simply one of the finest characters I've ever come across...
An extraordinary work of art -- Paul Harding
Marvellously lucid and intelligent... [a] novel about family, love, and a despair that proves unbearable -- Joy Williams
