Guardian's Best Fiction of 2022'One of the most original and exciting writers working in English today' - Jhumpa LahiriOnce home to the country's most illustrious families, Waitsfield, Massachusetts, is now an unforgiving place awash with secrets. Forged in this frigid landscape, Ruthie learns how the town's prim facade conceals a deeper, darker history and how silence often masks a legacy of harm - from the violence that runs down the family line to the horrors endured by her high school friends.In Very Cold People Sarah Manguso reveals the suffocating constraints of growing up in a very old, and very cold, small town. Here lies a vital confrontation with an all-American whiteness where the ice of emotional restraint meets the embers of smouldering rage . . .'Chilling . . . deeply impressive' - Guardian'A masterclass in unease' - The ObserverLonglisted for the Wingate Prize 2023
CONTRIBUTORS: Sarah Manguso
EAN: 9781529055290
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
PAGES:
WEIGHT: 152 g
HEIGHT: 196 cm
PUBLISHED BY: Pan Macmillan
DATE PUBLISHED:
CITY:
GENRE: FICTION / Literary, FICTION / Gothic, FICTION / Women, FICTION / Family Life / General, FICTION / Small Town & Rural
WIDTH: 130 cm
SPINE:
Book Themes:
US Northeast: New England, c 1980 to c 1989, Modern and contemporary fiction: general and literary, Family life fiction, Narrative theme: Coming of age, Narrative theme: Interior life, Narrative theme: Identity / belonging, Narrative theme: Social issues
A masterclass in unease, Manguso puts her own indelible stamp on the literary terrain of John Cheever and Susan Minot, daring to brush against the third rail of class., Magnificent . . . I hope all my fellow reader friends can find their way to this title either through their local library or independent bookseller. It is indeed special., An uncomfortable, deeply impressive account of how silence, snobbery and repression in a New England town allow the poison of abuse to trickle down the decades., Sarah Manguso is one of the most original and exciting writers working in English today. Every word feels necessary, and she’s redefining genre as she goes
Sarah Manguso is the author of 300 Arguments, Ongoingness, The Guardians, The Two Kinds of Decay, Hard to Admit and Harder to Escape, Siste Viator, and The Captain Lands in Paradise. Her work has been supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship and the Rome Prize, and her books have been translated into Chinese, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. Her poems have won a Pushcart Prize and appeared in four editions of the Best American Poetry series, and her essays have appeared in Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, and The Paris Review. She has taught graduate and undergraduate writing at institutions including Columbia, NYU, Princeton, Scripps College, and the University of Iowa. She lives in Los Angeles.
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