The Life to Come: A Novel
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The Life to Come: A Novel
Shortlisted for the 2018 Stella Prize
“For a novel concerned with dislocation, there's a lot of grounding humor in The Life to Come. Most of it comes at the expense of Pippa and her ilk, but de Kretser's observations are so spot on, you'll forgive her even as you cringe.†―New York Times Book Review
“The acclaimed Australian writer’s fifth novel spans continents―set in Australia, France and her native Sri Lanka―and weaves together disparate narratives that raise uncomfortable questions about Australian society, self-satisfied liberalism and modern life.†―Huffington Post, "60 Books We Can't Wait to Read in 2018â€
Set in Australia, France, and Sri Lanka, Miles Franklin Award-shortlisted The Life to Come is about the stories we tell and don’t tell ourselves as individuals, as societies, and as nations. Driven by a vivid cast of characters, it explores necessary emigration, the art of fiction, and ethnic and class conflict.
Pippa is an Australian writer who longs for the success of her novelist teacher and eventually comes to fear that she “missed everything important.†In Paris, Celeste tries to convince herself that her feelings for her married lover are reciprocated. Ash makes strategic use of his childhood in Sri Lanka, but blots out the memory of a tragedy from that time and can’t commit to his trusting girlfriend, Cassie. Sri Lankan Christabel, who is generously offered a passage to Sydney by Bunty, an old acquaintance, endures her dull job and envisions a brighter future that “rose, glittered, and sank back,†while she neglects the love close at hand.
The stand-alone yet connected worlds of The Life to Come offer meditations on intimacy, loneliness, and our flawed perception of reality. Enormously moving, gorgeously observant of physical detail, and often very funny, this new novel by Michelle de Kretser reveals how the shadows cast by both the past and the future can transform and distort the present. It is teeming with life and earned wisdom―exhilaratingly contemporary, with the feel of a classic.
