The World Before Us

(Paperback)

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Description

A haunting novel about trauma, loss, history and memory - set in a Victorian asylum and a quirky London museum Jane was fifteen when her life changed for ever. In the woods surrounding a Yorkshire country house, she took her eyes off the little girl she was minding and the girl slipped into the trees - never to be seen again. Now an adult, Jane is obsessed with another disappearance- that of a young woman who walked out of a Victorian lunatic asylum one day in 1877. As she pieces together moments in history, Jane uncovers a tangled story that has been buried for more than a century, and finally confronts her own past . . .

Reviews

Daring and mesmerizing. A haunting, irresistible story and an urgent mystery about what it means to pass through this life. Absorbing, luminous and powerfully human -- Alison MacLeod, author of Unexploded An original and intelligent novel about the past and its persistent power in the present Sunday Times Sensitive, melancholy, sharply observant. A work of great power Guardian Strange and absorbing ... I relished this book Penelope Lively, The New York Times Book Review Beguiling, richly suggestive ... a tantalising mystery Metro A complex, subtle, and utterly haunting meditation on memory, history, and mortality. This book is magnificent -- Emily St. John Mandel, author of Station Eleven

Author Bio

Aislinn Hunter is the author of a novel, Stay; a collection of stories, What's Left Us; and two collections of poetry, Into the Early Hours and The Possible Past. The World Before Us is her first book of fiction in twelve years. After travelling to London and Edinburgh over the past few years to study for a PhD, Aislinn Hunter now lives and teaches in Vancouver, British Columbia.