Description

‘Penetrating, intelligent, humane, funny too … Smart and powerfully alive’ Tessa Hadley
‘Superb’ Daily Mail
‘A poignant page-turner, delving deep into our most intimate relationships’ Evening Standard

Annie is the great love of Graham’s life. Here they are in late middle-age, the photographer and the bookseller, so mismatched and yet so well-matched. Theirs is a happy marriage of nearly thirty years – and even the happiest of marriages, Graham tells himself, have their secrets.

Then the unthinkable happens, and suddenly Annie is alone, stumbling in the dark. How much can we ever know the people who love us?

‘With what exquisite truth Sue Miller writes … I was completely wrapped up in the beautifully, and often so tenderly observed rollercoaster of grief. An invaluably moving book’ Juliet Nicolson

‘It’s absolutely wonderful – detailed, precise emotions that Miller gets down in such a tender moving way … Devasting. Brilliant’ Claire Fuller

Publisher Review

It was such a pleasure to read the work of someone so talented at the very peak of their powers - it is elegant, assured, captivating and devastating, and it's one of the most emotionally truthful novels I have ever read. Annie filled my head and my heart - this book will stay with me forever -- Daisy Buchanan Sue Miller's engrossing novel is infused with generosity and the complicated kind of love readers will recognize from real life * New York Times, 100 Notable Books of 2020 * Miller writes with tremendous subtlety and perception * Daily Mail * With humour and humanity, Miller crafts a revelatory tale of the complexities - and the absurdities - of love, infidelity, and grief * O, The Oprah Magazine * Subtle, luxurious pleasure. Bliss -- Cressida Connolly Penetrating, intelligent, humane, funny too ... Smart and powerfully alive -- Tessa Hadley So many books are written about the early days of marriage but few authors capture what it is to see it through to the bitter end ... One to read first for the story and then to re-read at leisure and marvel at how real these people feel -- Erin Kelly Oh my goodness with what exquisite truth Sue Miller writes. The intimacies and doubts and emotion-swerving relationship that IS marriage, that emotional snakes and ladders, tamed during the day but unleashed in the middle of the night ,were skewered with such perfect insight. I was completely wrapped up in the beautifully, and often so tenderly observed rollercoaster of grief. An invaluably moving book -- Juliet Nicolson Miller is concerned with deeper mysteries of human motivation ... A writer with an uncanny compass for the contrary * Sunday Telegraph * Miller's thoughtful, searching prose fills in all the background details, and her vivid characters are utterly believable. Brilliant * The Times * An eloquent chronicler of the complexities of ordinary relationships, whose informal language belies the depths of her insights ... Miller nails the contradictory emotions and desires that are responsible for people so often bypassing the seemingly easy road to happiness * Independent * Miller writes with grace and poise, crafting an examination of love and loss that is both understated and emotionally charged * Guardian * Full of Ms. Miller's signature intelligence about people caught between moral responsibility and a hunger for self-realisation * New York Times * Sue Miller's writing, while never showy, builds an honest, elegant world around the reader -- Sadie Jones Fiction so rich, so thoughtful, so absorbing that reading it is like experiencing the passage in our own lives * Los Angeles Times *