'Thrilling, brilliant and immense in the best possible way… teeming with ideas and digressions on literature, art, history and love' Francesca Reece, author of Voyeur
'Compelling, tense and moving – I loved this smart and subtle exploration of modern motherhood and womanhood' Daisy Buchanan, author of Insatiable
'Vibrating with intelligence and style' Emily Temple, author of The Lightness
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In the long run, it was impossible to hide the fact that Cecilia had one day decided to leave her children and her husband, to take off and never come back.
Martin Berg is slowly falling into crisis. Decades ago, he was an aspiring writer who'd almost finished his novel, his girlfriend was the wildly intelligent and beautiful Cecilia Wickner, and his best friend was the up-and-coming artist Gustav Becker. But Martin's manuscript has long been languishing in a desk drawer, Gustav has stopped answering his calls, and Cecilia has been missing for years - ever since she vanished from his life, leaving him to raise their two young children alone.
So who was Cecilia? Martin's eccentric wife, Gustav's enigmatic muse, an absent mother - a woman who was perhaps only true to herself. When Martin's daughter Rakel stumbles across a clue about what happened to her mother, she becomes determined to fill in the gaps in her family's story. But she can't escape the simple question at the heart of it all: How can anyone leave someone they love?
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'[Collected Works] will suck you in and refuse to let go' LitHub
'A richly evocative work from a major new talent' Kirkus Reviews
'A sweeping and complex drama of family, art and sacrifice... Readers will be captivated' Publishers Weekly
'[A] warm, engaging and funny novel about the inebriation of youth and the sobriety of middle age... a thoroughly enjoyable book' Ayşegül Savaş, author of White on White
