Books

‘One of the most beautiful novels I have read in a very long time’

– Mark Haddon

Six astronauts rotate in their spacecraft above the earth. They are there to collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day.

Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction. The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part – or protective – of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?

‘I don’t think I’ve read anything else with such love for its characters and such clarity about the state of the planet’

– Sarah Moss

‘An extraordinary achievement, containing multitudes.

– The Observer

‘A gorgeous song of praise from on high’

– Mike McCormack

‘A lush description of the gorgeous earth’

– Daisy Hildyard

Orbit map with daylight in the northern hemisphere.

(Tea-stained, dog-eared, world-travelled, often-lost, most irreplaceable piece of paper, without which Orbital could not have been written.)

‘A masterpiece, so good I can hardly breathe. I’m completely floored by it.’

– Helen Macdonald

Harvey’s insomnia arrived, seemingly from nowhere; for a year she has spent her nights chasing sleep that rarely comes. She’s tried everything to appease it. Nothing is helping.

What happens when one of the basic human needs goes unmet? And could extreme sleep deprivation result in a raw clarity about life itself?

Urgent and wild, but also dazzling in its precision . . . a dark, seductive book about fear and madness and their allure. One emerges from it with an altered perspective, a sense of time having slowed down.

New Statesman

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‘What a spectacularly good book. It is so controlled and yet so wild. Easily one of the truest and best books I’ve read about what it’s like to be alive now, in this country.’

– Max Porter

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‘Intricately intriguing . . . astonishing. The Shapeless Unease is a particular joy.’

– Scotland on Sunday

‘A wonderful creation . . . less like reading a novel and more akin to time travel – something I’ve only previously encountered in the work of Hilary Mantel.’

– Financial Times

15th-century Oakham, in Somerset: a tiny village cut off by a river and no bridge. When a man is swept away in the early hours of Shrove Saturday, an explanation has to be found. Was it murder, suicide or an accident? The village priest, John Reve, is privy to many secrets in his role as confessor. But will he be able to unravel what happened to the victim, Thomas Newman, the wealthiest, most capable and industrious man in the village? And what will happen if he can’t?

Winner of the 2019 Staunch Book Prize and shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize

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‘Startling and energising . . . one of [the year’s] best books.’

– Alex Clark, The Spectator

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‘This astonishing book is at once a rollicking mystery and a profound meditation on faith and existence.’

– The Observer

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‘Harvey is up there with the best writers working today. She makes the medieval world feel as relevant as tomorrow morning because – as always – she captures the immutable stuff of the human condition.’

Nathan Filer

‘Harvey has struck gold. So intimate, so honest, so raw.’

– The Guardian

In the middle of a winter’s night, a woman wraps herself in a blanket, picks up a pen and starts writing to an estranged friend. In answer to a question you asked a long time ago, she writes, and so begins a letter that calls up a shared past both women have preferred to forget.

Without knowing if her friend, Butterfly, is even alive or dead, she writes night after night – a letter of friendship that turns into something more revealing and recriminating. By turns a belated outlet of rage, an act of self-defence, and an offering of forgiveness, the letter revisits a betrayal that happened a decade and a half before, and dissects what is left of a friendship caught between the forces of hatred and love.

Shortlisted for the 2015 James Tait Black Memorial Prize
Longlisted for the 2015 Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction
Longlisted for the 2015 Jerwood Prize

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‘Beautiful . . . Exhilarating . . . Remarkable. I was at times reminded of Marilynne Robinson.’

– James Wood, The New Yorker

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‘Ravishing. Harvey offers an incandescent vision of hope and acceptance.’

– Sunday Telegraph

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‘Harvey’s writing is stunning: an effortless spool that winds back the layers… Brilliant.’

– Kate Saunders, The Times

‘Profound, beautiful and cathartic writing.’

– Daily Telegraph

Leonard is alone and rootless, returning to London after his father’s death. He moves in with his distant brother William and his family, hoping to renew their friendship but learning to drop his expectations of brotherhood. William is a former lecturer and activist who now runs informal meetings with ex-students. He is defiantly unworldly and forever questioning.
When a young student follows William’s arguments to a shocking conclusion, it appears William has already set his own fate in motion. Against a backdrop of tabloid frenzy, Leonard can only watch as William embraces the danger in the only way he knows how, which threatens to consume not only himself, but his entire family.

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‘This beautifully written composition does that rare thing, of provoking free thought, while scrutinising the far-reaching repercussions of such rebellious activity.’

Freya McClelland, Independent

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‘Harvey’s slow, intense thoughtfulness feels positively Woolfean at times. She thinks deeply, and writes beautifully about these thoughts.’

Lucy Atkins, Sunday Times

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‘Intense, rewarding and bracingly serious.’

Financial Times

‘Brave and intelligent. A mesmerising work.’

– Independent

It’s Jake’s birthday. He has lost his wife, his son is in prison and he is about to lose his past. Jake has Alzheimer’s.

As the disease takes hold of him, the key events of his life shift, and what until recently seemed solid fact melts into surreal imaginings. Is his daughter alive or long dead? And why exactly is his son in prison? There was a cherry tree once, and a yellow dress, but what do they mean? Is there anything he’ll be able to salvage from the wreckage?

Winner of the Betty Trask Prize

Shortlisted for the Orange Prize

Shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award

Longlisted for the Booker Prize

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‘An extraordinary dramatisation of a mind in the process of disintegration. Brilliant.’

-The Times

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‘A brave imagining of [Alzheimer’s]…. There are moments of clarity; there is the persistence of desire; there are enduring long-term memories that remain after there is no capacity to recall what was for breakfast or if there was breakfast or what the thing called breakfast is.’

The New York Times 

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‘A forensic examination of loss and misunderstanding, a paean to the vital force of stories, and an incredibly moving look at a sword of Damocles that hangs over us all.’

– Tom Webber, Observer

From complete and unexcelled liberation I gained absolutely nothing.

– Buddha