LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE

'A love letter to literature and storytelling' Eimear McBride

'I am utterly obsessed with Niall Williams' Ann Patchett

In her attic room, with the rain rushing down the windows, Ruthie Swain is trying to find her father through stories.

Brought home after a collapse, she lies surrounded by her father's library of three thousand, nine hundred and fifty-eight books. But Ruthie's story, and the story of the Swains before her, is rooted not in these books' pages, but in the land – fourteen rain-sodden acres of earth useless for farming, but teeming with stories.

From her bed, Ruthie writes Ireland, with its weather, its rivers, its lilts, and its lows. The stories she recounts bring back to life multiple generations buried in this soil - and they might just bring her back into the world again, too.

'Extremely moving ... By the final chapter I was weeping' Sunday Times

'Dazzling … Paragraph after paragraph begs you to stop and reread it, to relish the lilt of it in your inner ear' The Times

'Beautiful and enchanting … A novel that weaves a love of literature into its own moving tale' Guardian