Paperback

Longlisted for the Booker Prize

Winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize

Shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year

Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize

Longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize’Original, memorable, shimmering’ – Sarah Moss

Lia has only one child, Iris; her magical, awkward, endlessly creative daughter who has just entered the battleground of her teenage years. Lia and Iris have always been close, but there is a war playing out inside Lia’s body, too, and everything is about to change. As she confronts what might be the end, memories of her own childhood and a passionate love affair come rushing into her present, unearthing buried secrets and her family’s deepest fears.

But Lia hopes: for more time, for more love, for more Iris. Dancing between voices within Lia’s body and without, flitting back and forth in time, this sweeping, dazzling story of a life and what it is to let go marks the arrival of an extraordinary novelist. ‘Restlessly inventive . . . delicate and persuasive’ – The Guardian’Extraordinary, kaleidoscopic’ – Daisy Johnson