Synopsis
Guardian's Best Fiction of the Year
'One of the most original and exciting writers working in English today' - Jhumpa Lahiri
Once 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 Observer
Longlisted for the Wingate Prize 2023
Details
Reviews
“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.”Sarah Jessica Parker via Instagram
“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.”'Best Fiction of 2022', The Guardian
“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”Jhumpa Lahiri, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Interpreter of Maladies
“Very Cold People knocked me to my knees. So precise, so austere, so elegant, this story is devastatingly familiar to those of us who know the loneliness of growing up in a place of extreme emotional restraint. Manguso is one of my favourite writers, and this book is a revelation”Lauren Groff, author of Florida
