Signs for Lost Children - Softcover

Sarah Moss

3.92

1,230 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 178378105X ISBN 13: 9781783781058

Publisher: Granta, 2015

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Only weeks into their marriage a young couple embark on a six-month period of separation. Tom Cavendish goes to Japan to build lighthouses and his wife Ally, Doctor Moberley-Cavendish, stays and works at the Truro asylum. As Ally plunges into the institutional politics of mental health, Tom navigates the social and professional nuances of late 19th century Japan. With her unique blend of emotional insight and intellectual profundity, Sarah Moss builds a novel in two parts from Falmouth to Tokyo, two maps of absence; from Manchester to Kyoto, two distinct but conjoined portraits of loneliness and determination. An exquisite continuation of the story of Bodies of Light, Signs for Lost Children will amaze Sarah Moss's many fans.

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Review:

'Sarah Moss is one of our country's most underrated writers... Ally is one of the most memorable heroines of recent fiction. These books scream TV drama. You'll have forgotten Poldark and Outlander in no time. If there is one author you take a chance on this year, let it be her - it's time, and money, well spent' -- 'Best novel of 2015 so far', The Times

'Ally's torment is sympathetically rendered and is skilfully counterbalanced by Moss's sensual and beguiling descriptions of Japan' -- Daily Mail

'A quietly devastating portrait... Moss is an effortlessly elegant writer and [Signs for Lost Children is] a compelling, often harrowing, occasionally heartbreaking read. It seems to me, with this book, that it's no longer sufficient to call what Moss is doing 'novel-writing'. Taken together, these three books constitute an ongoing interrogation of the role of women within the family, and in the wider world, and it's a broader, knottier enterprise than the word novel allows. A project, perhaps you could call it, of the lifelong variety. An undertaking' -- Guardian

'As with Bodies of Light, the richness of Moss's work is astonishing. Few writers demonstrate such quietly magisterial command of the rocky territories of both the heart and mind' -- Independent

'Moss captures Japan in the 1880s with chromatic elegance [and] lyrical descriptions. Signs for Lost Children [is] a rich and intricate novel' --Sunday Times

'Heartfelt... This wonderful, subtle novel picks up the strands of the story Sarah Moss began in Bodies of Light. This [is a] fine novel' ***** Sunday Express

The arc of a Victorian novel, [though,] demands some sort of reunion and Moss, a writer of complexity and restraint, shows real skill in the way she brings these 'lost children' back together. Both have been changed by what has happened during their separation. Whether they can get back to their early state of grace is a question Moss leaves hanging until the very last page.
Financial Times --Financial Times

'In Ally, Moss has created a truly radical character. Moss has a superb eye for texture and detail. She's a serious novelist in the best sense of the word' Metro

'For doctors - male or female - wrestling with their own work-life balance, this book is a gratifying read.' Trisha Greenhalgh, British Journal of General Practice

'Lyricism combines with a bad romance in Sarah Moss's Signs for Lost Children and is a pleasure to read'
Finest Books of 2015 by the Independent s literary critics. Chosen by Arifa Akbar --Independent

About the Author:

SARAH MOSS was educated at Oxford University and is currently an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Warwick. She is the author of three novels: Cold Earth (Granta 2010), Night Waking (Granta 2012), which was selected for the Fiction Uncovered Award in 2011, and Bodies of Light (Granta 2014); and the co-author of Chocolate: A Global History. She spent 2009-10 as a visiting lecturer at the University of Iceland, and wrote an account of her time there in Names for the Sea: Strangers in Iceland (Granta 2012), which was shortlisted for the 2013 RSL Ondaatje Prize.

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