February

Publishing Details

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Description

A moving and masterful novel from an extraordinary writer comparable to Carol Shields and Mary Lawson, longlisted for the Booker Prize 2010. In 1982, the oil rig Ocean Ranger sinks off the coast of Newfoundland during a Valentine's night storm. Helen O'Mara, pregnant with her fourth child, receives a call telling her that her husband, Cal, has drowned. A quarter of a century later, Helen is woken by another phone call. It is her wayward son, John, calling from another time zone to tell her that he has made a girl pregnant and he wants Helen to decide what to do. As John grapples with what it might mean to be a father, Helen realises that she must shake off her decades of mourning in order to help. With grace and precision and an astonishing ability to render the precise details of her characters' physical and emotional worlds, Lisa Moore reveals the story that unfurls around those two moments.

Reviews

Lisa Moore's work is passionate, gritty, lucid and beautiful. She has a great gift -- Anne Enright
Moore's wonderful fluidity of approach is noticeable right down to the level of her individual sentences. It has been a joy indeed to discover Lisa Moore * Daily Telegraph *
An astonishing writer. She brings to her pages what we are always seeking in fiction and only find in the best of it: a magnetizing gift for revealing how the earth feels, looks, tastes, smells, and an unswerving instinct for what's important in life -- Richard Ford
Heart-warming...domestic fiction at its finest... Moore depicts her characters with compassion and respect... Despite the chill of its title, February exudes the warmth and joyousness of a much sunnier world -- Michael Arditti * Daily Mail *
Moore slips [small insights] in so gently you barely feel them, turning a sad story simply told into a minor-key triumph * Guardian *
Assured, supple, graceful prose -- Boyd Tonkin * Independent *
[An] extraordinary, unusually philosophical and human novel... Moore's prose is precise, never laboured and always, and this is the crucial point, convincing -- Eileen Battersby * Irish Times *
Skilfully structured...delicate, involving novel * Daily Express *
Moore deftly weaves together the present...and the past, evoking memory and grief in pitch-perfect detail * New Yorker *
A very moving study of memory and grief -- Adrian Turpin * Financial Times *

Author Bio

Lisa Moore is the acclaimed author of Alligator, winner of the Commonwealth Prize for Canada and the Caribbean, a finalist for the Giller Prize and longlisted for the Orange Prize. Her story collection Open was also a finalist for the Giller. Both books were bestsellers in Canada. Lisa Moore lives with her husband and two children in St John's, Newfoundland.