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The Great Wide Open

‘Accomplished…a strangely mesmerising effect…absolutely excellent’ New Statesman

New York, 1980s

Alice Burns — a young book editor — is deep into a manuscript about the morass of family life. The observations within resonate, perhaps, because she has just watched her own family implode.

As she reads she wonders: When did the sadness start? And could it be that unhappiness is a choice?

Thus begins a great American epic which follows Alice as she navigates high school, first love and sexism at an elite college, a spell in 1970s Ireland, and a tragedy that sends her stateside as the US embraces a cowboy actor named Reagan.

But it is also the tale of her endlessly complex parents and brothers — how their destinies are written by the lies they tell themselves and others.

The Great Wide Open is an immensely ambitious and compulsive saga; a novel which will speak volumes to anyone who has marvelled at that pain that can only be caused by family itself.

  • Format
  • paperback
  • Pages
  • 592
  • Language
  • english
  • ISBN
  • 978-0-09-958521-3
  • EAN
  • 9780099585213
  • Release date
  • 2019