Description

By the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Home and Gilead, a modern American masterpiece by an author whose work ‘defines universal truths about what it means to be human’ (Barack Obama)

‘A classic.’ Guardian
‘A masterpiece.’ The New Yorker
‘It’s pretty much a perfect novel.’ David Nicholls
‘I just adore this book and have probably reread it a hundred times.’ Michelle Zauner

Ruth and Lucille are orphans growing up in the small desolate town of Fingerbone in the vast northwest of America. Abandoned by a succession of relatives, the sisters find themselves in the care of Sylvie, the remote and enigmatic sister of their dead mother. Steeped in imagery of the bleak wintry landscape around them, the sisters’ struggle towards adulthood is powerfully portrayed in a masterful modern classic exploring loss, loneliness and transience.

Publisher Review

"So precise, so distilled, so beautiful that one doesn't want to miss any pleasure it might yield."--"The New York Times Book Review" "Here's a first novel that sounds as if the author has been treasuring it up all her life...You can feel in the book a gathering voluptuous release of confidence, a delighted surprise at the unexpected capacities of language, a close, careful fondness for people that we thought only saints felt."--Anatole Broyard, "The New York Times" "I found myself reading slowly, than more slowly--this is not a novel to be hurried through, for every sentence is a delight."--Doris Lessing