The Life to Come
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3.1 • 74 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the 2018 Miles Franklin Award
Shortlisted for the 2018 Stella Award
Winner of the 2019 NSW Premier's Literary Awards Christina Stead Prize for Fiction
'I so much admire Michelle de Kretser's formidable technique - her characters feel alive, and she can create a sweeping narrative which encompasses years, and yet still retain the sharp, almost hallucinatory detail.' Hilary Mantel
'Michelle de Kretser knows how to construct a gripping story. She writes quickly and lightly of wonderful and terrible things... A master storyteller.' A.S. Byatt
Set in Sydney, Paris and Sri Lanka, The Life to Come is a mesmerising novel about the stories we tell and don't tell ourselves as individuals, as societies and as nations. It feels at once firmly classic and exhilaratingly contemporary.
Pippa is a writer who longs for success. Celeste tries to convince herself that her feelings for her married lover are reciprocated. Ash makes strategic use of his childhood in Sri Lanka but blots out the memory of a tragedy from that time. Driven by riveting stories and unforgettable characters, here is a dazzling meditation on intimacy, loneliness and our flawed perception of other people.
Profoundly moving as well as wickedly funny, The Life to Come reveals how the shadows cast by both the past and the future can transform, distort and undo the present. This extraordinary novel by Miles Franklin-winning author Michelle de Kretser will strike to your soul.
'...one of those rare writers whose work balances substance with style. Her writing is very witty, but it also goes deep, informed at every point by a benign and far-reaching intelligence.' Kerryn Goldsworthy, Sydney Morning Herald
'...a dazzlingly accomplished author who commands all the strokes. Her repertoire stretches from a hallucinatory sense of place to a mastery of suspense, sophisticated verbal artistry and a formidable skill in navigating those twisty paths where history and psychology entwine.' Boyd Tonkin, Independent
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
The Life to Come plays out like a gorgeously directed anthology film. One by one, Michelle de Kretser illuminates her five main characters, painting their beautiful, flawed inner worlds so intimately and unsparingly that they’re hard not to judge—or love. In settings ranging from Sydney to Sri Lanka, de Kretser’s stories show how hard it can be to find real intimacy in a world supposedly made smaller and more connected every day.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
De Kretser's sprawling follow-up to her novella Springtime features many different lives converging and diverging across decades and continents. In Sydney, Pippa wants to make her mark on Australian fiction, while her former professor, George, distances himself from his cult following the success of his own books. A few streets away, Cassie falls for Ash, mesmerized by his mysterious boyhood in Sri Lanka. In Paris, Celeste works as a translator while reckoning with her complicated history with the city and the lover she rearranges her life for. And all the while, over many decades, Sri Lankan Christabel and her childhood friend Bunty build a quiet life together in Australia after reconnecting as adults. While each section can stand alone, together they create a joyful and mournful meditation on the endless small pleasures and complications of life: the difficulties of immigration, the logistics of infidelity, the creativity and insight born of jealousy and spite. In de Kretser's sure-footed and often surprising prose, life is rendered as something that's "tedious yet require concentration, like a standard-issue dream."
Customer Reviews
Good writing but very difficult to get I to
It was definitely not something I couldn’t put down. I found it hard to get into, although the language and writing was lovely.
The Life to Come
Starting this book was for me an endeavour but gradually I became entranced with the journey that it was taking me on and when I came to the end wanted nothin more than it should continue.