Purchase
A Novel
Riverhead Books
March 2022
On Sale: March 1, 2022
288 pages
ISBN: 0593420497
EAN: 9780593420492
Kindle: B097XBXQ1T
Hardcover / e-Book
Add to Wish List
Fiction | Coming of Age
In a working-class town in a county west of London, a schoolgirl scribbles stories in the back pages of her exercise book, intoxicated by the first sparks of her imagination. As she grows, everything and everyone she encounters become fuel for a burning talent. The large Russian man in the ancient maroon car who careens around the grocery store where she works as a checkout clerk, and slips her a copy of Beyond Good and Evil. The growing heaps of other books in which she loses–and finds–herself. Even the derailing of a friendship, in a devastating violation. The thrill of learning to conjure characters and scenarios in her head is matched by the exhilaration of forging her own way in the world, the two kinds of ingenuity kindling to a brilliant conflagration.
| 
© 2003-2026