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NATIONAL BESTSELLER
"An absolutely unforgettable novel."—Ian Williams
A masterwork from one of the country’s most critically acclaimed and beloved writers that grapples with male violence, sexual abuse, and madness. Complusively readable and heartstopping.
Wade Jackson, a young man from a Newfoundland outport, wants to be a writer. In the university library in St. John’s, where he goes every day to absorb the great books of the world, he encounters the fascinating, South African-born Rachel van Hout, and soon they are lovers.
Rachel is the youngest of four van Hout daughters, each in their own way a wounded soul. The oldest, Gloria, has a string of broken marriages behind her. Carmen is addicted to every drug her Afrikaner dealer husband can lay his hands on. Bethany, the most sardonic of the sisters, is fighting a losing battle with anorexia. And then there is Rachel, who reads The Diary of Anne Frank obsessively, and diarizes her days in a secret language of her own invention, writing to the point of breakdown and beyond—an obsession that has deeper and more disturbing roots than Wade could ever have imagined.
Confronting the central mystery of his character Rachel’s life—and his own—Wayne Johnston has created a brilliant and searing tour de force that pulls the reader toward a conclusion both inevitable and impossible to foresee.
