Carry the One
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
'Here's passion and addiction, guilt and damage, all the beautiful mess of family life. Carry the Onewill lift readers off their feet and bear them along on its eloquent tide' Emma Donoghue
In the early hours of the morning, following a wedding reception, a car filled with stoned, drunk and sleepy guests accidentally hits and kills a girl on a dark country road. For the next twenty-five years, the lives of those involved are subtly shaped by this tragic moment.
Through friendships and love affairs, marriage and divorce, parenthood, addiction, and the modest calamities and triumphs of ordinary days, Carry the One shows how one life affects another and how those who thrive and those who self-destruct are closer to each other than we'd expect.
'Her deftly episodic novel of love, time and off-beat family life is warm, generous and wise. An enormously engaging novel' Daily Mail
'Carry The Oneis a finely crafted novel, full of phrases you want to cut out and keep, and characters you think you know. It is delicate in its touch, yet huge in its reach' Observer
'Superb . . . Anshaw sees her characters with startling clarity and no small helping of warmth and humour . . . Anshaw's writing [is] subtle, bemused, kind and smart, she nails moment after moment . . .Carry The Oneis a marvellous novel, grown-up, smart and emotionally intelligent about people who, like the rest of us, try but mostly fail to keep their ducks in a row' Patrick Ness, Guardian
'A tender tale of what happens to ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances' Marie Claire
'A funny, vivid and pingingly true story about longing and the pain of love. Anshaw conveys beefy emotions and life-changing events with the most gossamer of touches' Rachel Johnson, Vogue
'If you love Jonathan Franzen, you'll love this compelling book' Entertainment Weekly
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The one that must be carried when the Kenney siblings add themselves up is the girl who was hit and killed when Nick and Alice were driving home, stoned and stupid, from their sister Carmen's wedding. That's the first chapter: the rest of the novel and the rest of their lives sex and drugs and prison visits, family parties and divorce, raising teenagers, painting, politics, and addiction play out with that guilt and loss forever in the background. Anshaw has a deft touch with the events of ordinary life, giving them heft and meaning without being ponderous. As the siblings' lives skip across time, Carmen's marriage, shadowed by the accident, falls apart; painter Alice's career moves forward unlike her life, as she remains stuck on the same woman, her former sister-in-law; and astronomer Nick fights, with decreasing success, his craving for drugs. Funny, touching, knowing about painting and parents from hell, about small letdowns and second marriages, the parking lots where people go to score, and most of all, about the ways siblings shape and share our lives Anshaw (Seven Moves) makes it look effortless. Don't be fooled: this book is a quiet, lovely, genuine accomplishment.
