Shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award 2015, this title features stories of two island families, illuminating the small miracles and miseries of a community of outsiders, and the bonds of blood and fate that connect them all. Dreamlike and yet impossibly real, profound and playful, The Shore is a richly unique, breathtakingly ambitious and accomplished debut novel by a young writer of astonishing gifts.
Longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction 2015.
The Shore. A collection of small islands sticking out from the coast of Virginia into the Atlantic Ocean that has been home to generations of fierce and resilient women. Sanctuary to some but nightmare to others, it's a place they've inhabited, fled, and returned to for hundreds of years. From a brave girl's determination to protect her younger sister as methamphetamine ravages their family, to a lesson in summoning storm clouds to help end a drought, these women struggle against domestic violence, savage wilderness, and the corrosive effects of poverty and addiction to secure a sense of well-being for themselves and for those they love.
'I loved this book ... Epic in breadth but glittering in its detail, The Shore is utterly absorbing.' -- Catherine O'Flynn
'A vivid exploration of the struggle for autonomy and the many meanings of what we call home.' -- Eimear McBride, author of A Girl is a Half-formed Thing
'Sara Taylor has a completely natural, unforced feel for language and voice: a remarkable debut.' -- Adam Thorpe
'This is not a novel for the faint-hearted but dare to read it for the sinuous fluency of the writing.' -- Maureen Duffy
Author
About Sara Taylor
Sara Taylor is herself a socially anxious product of rural Virginia and the homeschooling movement. She traded her health for a BFA from Randolph College, and her sanity for an MA in Prose Fiction from the University of East Anglia. Following the MA her supervisor refused to let her leave, so she remains at the UEA to chip away at a double-focus PhD in censorship and fiction. She spends an unprecedented amount of time on delayed trains between Norwich and her husband's house in Reading, and tends to get lost, rained on, and chased by cows with unsettling frequency.
