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Book Synopsis"A richly imagined eco-gothic tale." - The Guardian "Exquisitely realised." - The Times After the ravages of the Green Winter, Earth is a place of deep jungles and monstrous animals. The last of the human race is divided into surface dwellers and the people who live in the Upper Settlement, a ring perched at the edge of the Earth s atmosphere. Bearing witness to this divided planet is Pearl, a young techie with a thread of shuvani blood, who lives in the isolated forests of Gobari, navigating her mad mother and the strange blue light in the sky. But Pearl s stepfather promises her to a starborn called Arlo, and the world Pearl thought she knew will never be the same again. Set in the luscious landscape of Andalusia, this claustrophobic, dystopian reimagining of Wide Sargasso Sea is a fever dream, a blazing vision of self-destruction and transformation.
Trade ReviewPraise for
The Swimmers"A meticulously detailed novel set in a vivid, believable eco-dystopia... Womack draws in readers immediately with her dreamy depictions of the landscape and its dangers. At its heart, however, the novel is a probing examination of cultural and class differences. Readers will be captivated." –
Publishers Weekly, Starred Review“A richly imagined eco-gothic tale.” –
The Guardian"Exquisitely realised.” –
The Times, 10 Best SF Books of 2021For
Annihilation fans, the prose is fluid & gorgeously intimate. The questions of our future—a sea of plastic/the intersection of class & climate change—are explored on a tender, personal scale.
G.V. AndersonWomack has an eye for both the beauty and the horror of the natural world. Like a strange fever dream, the world of
The Swimmers is uncanny and unfamiliar, wonderfully compelling and utterly inescapable. One of my favourite books of the year.
Helen MarshallJane Eyre meets
Annihilation in this ingenious, bewitching novel. The prose is as lush and terrifying as the warped jungle Earth has become. This is speculative fiction at its best: thought-provoking, riveting, and gorgeously told.
Jennie MelamedWomack is an exciting and endlessly inventive writer. I look forward to reading everything she writes.
Naomi BoothWomack is a wonderful writer, and
The Swimmers is a marvellous, heartbreaking exploration of the world we are busy creating, and the world we must then inhabit.
Aliya WhiteleyPraise for
The Golden KeyWith hints of the brooding Gothic of
Rawblood and
Rebecca, this wonderfully creepy historical novel makes it absolutely clear that Marian Womack is a rising star.
Tim MajorAn intriguing and unsettling tale. . . Womack brings a great sense of the uncanny to the Fens.
Alison LittlewoodThe Golden Key mesmerizes… A beguiling mystery that lingers long after reading.
Katherine StansfieldA fey, unsettling vision of Norfolk, and London, that fans of
The Essex Serpent will love... This book gives up its secrets like a puzzle box.
G.V. AndersonA
fascinating, unsettling tale that shifts, mutates and changes meaning much like the eerie ruined house in the fens at the centre of this weird and brilliant debut novel.
Lisa TuttlePraise for
Lost Objects Intriguing and illuminating… chockfull of interesting ideas about the natural world and ourselves.
Jeff VanderMeerMarian Womack weaves together the lyricism of Angela Carter, the mad imagination of China Miéville, and the earthiness of Robert Macfarlane.
Helen MarshallLuminous and disturbing as the unearthly things they describe, Marian Womack’s gorgeously written tales map the shifting boundaries between waking life and dream, past and future and our own profoundly unsettled present. Reading them left me with goosebumps, and the craving for more stories by this supremely gifted new writer.
Elizabeth Hand
