Synopsis
'The achievement of a lifetime' - Jessie Burton, author of The House of Fortune
'A book of lasting pleasures' - Eleanor Catton, Booker Prize-winning author of Birnam Wood
'A powerful and beautifully written story of family, friendship and identity' - Guardian
Just out of school and teetering on the brink of adulthood, Edith is sent alone to rural Italy. Her task is simple: support her sister Lydia, a brilliant but brittle ballet dancer, through the final weeks of her pregnancy. Once the baby is born, she is to make a phone call that will change all of their lives forever.
Decades later, Edith is living a contented life in Ireland, happily divorced and unexpectedly free. But when her friend Méabh receives an email from a stranger claiming to be her brother, everything shifts. As Méabh confronts a history she never knew she had, Edith must finally face the truth of that long-ago summer, and the secret she has carried for a lifetime.
‘Tender and rueful . . . Sarah Moss is a marvel of insight and eloquence’ - Emma Donoghue, author of The Paris Express
‘One of our greatest living writers’ - Katherine May, author of Wintering
Praise for Sarah Moss:
‘Throws much contemporary writing into the shade’ Hilary Mantel
‘One of our very best contemporary novelists’ The Independent
‘A brilliant mind’ The Guardian
‘Moss has quietly been putting out some of the most interesting and carefully sculpted novels of recent years’ Financial Times
‘One of the finest contemporary writers working in Britain today’ Stylist
‘Is Sarah Moss the best British writer never nominated for the Booker?’ The Daily Mail
‘Nothing escapes her sly humour and brilliant touch’ Jessie Burton
‘The most brilliant writer. She deserves to win all the prizes’ Joanna Trollope Trollope
Details
22 May 2025
9781529035506Reviews
Sex and childbirth, emigrant and exile, the present and the past: Sarah Moss’s ambidextrous talent is evident on every page of this elegant novel. It is intelligent, but never disembodied; evocative, but never sentimental; honest, but never cruel. Ripeness is a book of tart and lasting pleasures
This book felt to me like I was reading the achievement of a lifetime, written by one of the best writers alive. Moving, unexpected, masterful, it is a story of stories, of belonging, of exits and entrances, and everything in between. Moss’s understanding of who her characters are is also her understanding of all of us. A beautiful, powerful read that echoed for me long after
Tender and rueful, Ripeness is a tale of being a foreigner that moves between 1960s Italy and 2020s Ireland, finding pain and bliss in both. Working at the height of her mature powers, Sarah Moss is a marvel of insight and eloquence
I devoured Ripeness, thrilling at the world Moss brings to life and the characters who inhabit it. What a delicious novel
