A sensual, wonderfully engaging debut about a woman’s passionate affair with her father’s protégé. David Freeman, the charismatic and renowned director of the Broughton Poetry Foundation, has always been more interested in his work than family, and his daughter Katherine feels the wound of his neglect. David’s intense passion for his work masks a complicated inner world, and his already fraught relationship with Katherine is further threatened when she falls in love with his protégé, the poet Stephen Jericho. Years earlier, Katharine abandoned her career as a dancer, and she is muffled by motherhood and a conventional marriage; with the affair, she senses freedom. As she falls in love and her marriage starts to come apart, she begins to question the depth of the romance. Her emotional journey leads her back to the north of England where she was brought up, to her father, and to her younger self, the passionate dancer. Powerful, wise, and beautifully written, The Whole Wide Beauty is an unforgettable debut novel about searching for fulfillment in love, art, and life.

The Whole Wide Beauty: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Woof, Emily

United States

W.W.Norton&Company

Whole Wide Beauty

Literary

Faber&Faber

The Lightning Tree

Faber & Faber Fiction

United Kingdom circa the 1980s—Ursula and Jerry find themselves surrounded by hip hairdos and dominating parents. The future looks bleak if they do not change their lives dramatically. Both are itching to escape their current lives and engage with the wider world. Ursula’s work as a teacher takes her far away to India to instruct disabled children, while Jerry accepts a scholarship to Magdalen College—but only to “highlight the absurdity of privilege.” Their written exchanges are deep, political, and full of irony. All the while, Jerry stays committed to Ursula in mind but not in body, questioning their relationship and the nature of their love.

Humor & Satire

Europa Editions

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Books by Woof, Emily