“An astonishingly beautiful novel with an unearthly sirenic power that remains grounded in the knotty, ambivalent and profound relationships between its characters–mothers, daughters, lovers, the lost. Long Wave is a triumph.”
—Kaliane Bradley, New York Times bestselling author of The Ministry of Time
"Long Wave has the gravity of an epic and is her greatest achievement yet: a gripping mystery, a series of impeccable character portraits, and an unflinchingly observed treatise on the maelstrom of motherhood." —Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Mercies
A hypnotic and haunting work of fiction about losing yourself and finding your family, Long Wave is the finest novel yet from Booker Prize-shortlisted Daisy Johnson
Close to the shore is the island: uninhabited, wild, with only a storm-beaten lighthouse for shelter. Ori was found there as a small child with a handful of stones, no memories and no mother. When she has a baby of her own, the job of motherhood feels immense and sleepless nights begin to shatter her grip on reality. Her head fills with the sound of stones knocking against each other and the mystery of her past begins to unravel, opening a path to the mother she lost, and the mother she could become.
Years earlier, on a sweltering summer day, ten-year-old Ruth sees a woman and her baby walk into the river and disappear. But she is the only witness, and the water yields no trace. Ruth’s mother, Edith, locks her daughter away – first to restrain these wild imaginings, and later, when she falls pregnant, to hide the shame. Ruth longs to escape and dreams of the nearby island, where she and her baby can finally be free.
Told with mythic power and lyrical precision,
Long Wave is an extraordinary novel of longing and loss, rebirth and survival.
