Weathering - Softcover

Wood, Lucy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1408840952 ISBN 13: 9781408840955

Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks, 2016

Synopsis

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BETTY TRASK PRIZE 2016

Pearl doesn't know how she's ended up in the river - the same messy, cacophonous river in the same rain-soaked valley she'd been stuck in for years. Or why, for that matter, she'd been stupid enough to fall down those rickety stairs.

Ada, Pearl's daughter, doesn't know how she's ended up back in the house she left thirteen years ago - with no heating apart from a fire she can't light, no way of getting around apart from an old car she's scared to drive, and no company apart from echoing footsteps on the damp floorboards. With her daughter Pepper, she starts to sort through Pearl's things, clearing the house so she can leave and not look back. Pepper has grown used to following her restless mother from place to place, but this house, with its faded photographs, its boxes of cameras and its stuffed jackdaw, is something new. Fascinated by the scattering of people she meets, by the river that unfurls through the valley, and by the strange old woman who sits on the bank with her feet in the cold, coppery water, Pepper doesn't know why anyone would ever want to leave.

As the first frosts of autumn herald the coming of a long winter and Pepper and Ada find themselves irresistibly entangled with the life of the valley, each will discover the ways that places can take root inside us and bind us together.

About this title

About the Author

Lucy Wood is the author of the critically acclaimed collection of short stories Diving Belles: And Other Stories. She has been longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize and was a runner-up in the BBC National Short Story Award. She has also been awarded a Somerset Maugham Award. Lucy Wood has a master's degree in creative writing from Exeter University. She lives in Devon.

Review

"Extraordinary writing, the finest language and imagery I’ve come across in a very long time. Precise, unindulgent, fresh and honest, every page is a celebration." ―New York Times Book Review

"Sensory, haunting and somewhat literally haunted, this novel tackles the big subjects--belonging, mortality, love--with quiet grace and intimate focus . . . True vitality lies beneath the surface of Wood's exquisite and poetic writing . . . A luminous modern fairy tale." ―starred review, Kirkus Reviews

"Marvelous . . . I could tell you this novel is about the portrait of an artist as a young girl. Or the thorny but loving relationship between mothers and daughters. Or how we discover ever more of our parents in ourselves as we age. Not yet 30, Wood handles all of these themes with remarkable insight, empathy and grace." ―Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

"One of Wood’s great strengths is the ability to fully inhabit her characters’ consciousness. She skilfully modifies her prose as she moves from one mind to another, leavening her vividly descriptive passages with snippets of speech or thought, wittily profane and colloquial . . . Pepper is a glorious child in the tradition of Harper Lee’s Scout and Donna Tartt’s Harriet." ―The Guardian

"Recalls Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping . . . Wood is a creator of worlds. This sodden river valley is one to savour." ―The Daily Telegraph

"Wood beautifully renders a landscape by turns rain-soaked and snow-laden . . . The author has a gift for capturing how humans are bound to and moulded by places." ―The Sunday Times

"Lucy Wood is a sorceress. These stories unfold in a dreamy marine light, one that reveals the miraculous in the everyday. It is guaranteed to enrapture a reader, and you'll want to come up slowly from its depths." ―Karen Russell on DIVING BELLES

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1408840952
• ISBN 13: 9781408840955
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304