Very Cold People by Sarah Manguso

Very Cold People by Sarah Manguso

The masterly debut novel from an exquisitely astute writer (The Boston Globe), about growing up in--and out of--the suffocating constraints of small-town America.

Compact and beautiful . . . This novel bordering on a novella punches above its weight.--The New York Times

Very Cold People reminded me of My Brilliant Friend.--The New Yorker

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, NPR, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian, Good Housekeeping

My parents didn't belong in Waitsfield, but they moved there anyway.

For Ruthie, the frozen town of Waitsfield, Massachusetts, is all she has ever known.

Once home to the country's oldest and most illustrious families--the Cabots, the Lowells: the first, best people--by the tail end of the twentieth century, it is an unforgiving place awash with secrets.

Forged in this frigid landscape Ruthie has been dogged by feelings of inadequacy her whole life. Hers is no picturesque New England childhood but one of swap meets and factory seconds and powdered milk. Shame blankets her like the thick snow that regularly buries nearly everything in Waitsfield.

As she grows older, Ruthie slowly learns how the town's prim facade conceals a deeper, darker history, and how silence often masks a legacy of harm--from the violence that runs down the family line to the horrors endured by her high school friends, each suffering a fate worse than the last. For Ruthie, Waitsfield is a place to be survived, and a girl like her would be lucky to get out alive.

In her eagerly anticipated debut novel, Sarah Manguso has written, with characteristic precision, a masterwork on growing up in--and out of--the suffocating constraints of a very old, and very cold, small town. At once an ungilded portrait of girlhood at the crossroads of history and social class as well as a vital confrontation with an all-American whiteness where the ice of emotional restraint meets the embers of smoldering rage, Very Cold People is a haunted jewel of a novel from one of our most virtuosic literary writers.

Sarah Manguso is the author of three memoirs: Ongoingness, The Guardians, and The Two Kinds of Decay, as well as a story collection and two collections of poetry. She currently resides in Los Angeles.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780593241240
ISBN 10	059324124X
Title	Very Cold People
Author	Sarah Manguso
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Hogarth
Year published	2023-01-03
Number of pages	208
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.