LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2020
'This is so good. We are not ready nor worthy' Ocean Vuong
'What
are you afraid of, he asks me and the answer of course is dentistry,
humiliation, scarcity, then he says what are your most useful skills?
People think I'm funny'
Lizzie Benson slid into her job
as a librarian without a traditional degree. But this gives her a
vantage point from which to practise her other calling: as an unofficial
shrink. For years, she has supported her God-haunted mother and her
recovering addict brother. They have both stabilized for the moment, but
then her old mentor, Sylvia Liller, makes a proposal. Sylvia has become
famous for her prescient podcast, Hell and High Water, and wants to
hire Lizzie to answer the mail she receives: from left-wingers worried
about climate change and right wingers worried about the decline of
western civilization.
As she dives into this polarized world,
she begins to wonder what it means to keep tending your own garden once
you've seen the flames beyond its walls. When her brother becomes a
father and Sylvia a recluse, Lizzie is forced to acknowledge the limits
of what she can do. But if she can't save others, then what, or who,
might save her?
And all the while the voices of the city keep floating in--funny, disturbing, and increasingly mad.