The Long Form (Paperback)

Paperback. From the award-winning author of the book-length essay This Little Art, a debut novel that reaches back to the start of the novel tradition and outward to the complexities of contemporary life.Kate Briggs debut novelthe follow-up to her acclaimed This Little Artis the story of a young mother, Helen, awake with her baby. Together they are moving through a morning routine that is in one sense entirely ordinaryresting, feeding, pacing. Yet in the closeness of their rented flat, such everyday acts take on epic scope, thoughts and objects made newly alive in the light of their shared attention. Then the rhythm of their morning is interrupted: a delivery person arrives with a used copy of Fieldings The History of Tom Jones, which Helen has ordered online. She begins to read, and attention shifts. As their day unfolds, the intimate space Helen shares with her baby becomes entwined with Fieldings novel, with other books and ideas, and with questions about class and privilege, housing and caregiving, and the support structures that underlie durational forms of codependency, both social and artistic. "The story of two people (Helen, a young mother, and her baby) composing their day together, when their day gets interrupted by a book. From here, Helen, her baby, and books spend the day together, entwined, along with the social realities Helen encounters in an everyday world of class and privilege, housing and care work, creativity and frienship."-- Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. …