Very Cold People (Hogarth Books + Picador UK, 2022)
Amazon Editors’ Pick • National Indie Bestseller • New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice • Long-listed for the Wingate Literary Prize, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, and the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award • Named a best book of the year by the Financial Times, the Globe and Mail, the Guardian, the Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, NPR, and The Week
About the book
For Ruthie, the frozen, snow-padded town of Waitsfield, Massachusetts, is all she has ever known. But this is no picturesque New England. Once "home of the bean and the cod, where Lowells speak only to Cabots, and Cabots speak only to God," by the tail end of the twentieth century it is an unforgiving place awash with secrets.
Very Cold People tells Ruthie's story through her eyes: from the shame handed down by her immigrant forebears and indomitable mother, to the violences endured by her high school friends, each suffering a fate worse than the last.
Part social commentary and part Gothic horror, Very Cold People is an ungilded portrait of girlhood at the crossroads of history and social class. In her highly anticipated debut novel, Sarah Manguso has produced a masterwork on how very cold places make for very cold people, and a pitiless look at an all-American whiteness.
Praise
“Sarah Manguso is one of the most original and exciting writers working in English today.” (Jhumpa Lahiri)… “A haunted masterpiece.” (Andrew Sean Greer)… “Exquisitely astute.” (Boston Globe)… “Crackles like a room-temperature beverage poured over ice.” (Washington Post)… “A taut, blisteringly smart novel, both measured and rageful.” (Kirkus, starred review)… “An instant classic.” (Chicago Review of Books)
Reviews