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The Children's House

Alice Nelson

$32.99

Paperback

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English
knopf australia
01 October 2018

ABBEY’S BOOKSELLER PICK —— In exquisitely controlled prose, Alice Nelson has crafted a deeply compassionate novel about our need for safety and belonging, our need to feel at home. Gavin Sladen

A love song to the idea of families in all their mysteries and complexities, their different configurations and the hope that creates them. Marina and her husband, Jacob, were each born on a kibbutz in Israel. They meet years later at a university in California, when Jacob is a successful psychiatrist with a young son, Ben, from a disastrous marriage. The family moves to a brownstone in Harlem, formerly a convent inhabited by elderly nuns.

Outside the house one day Marina encounters Constance, a young refugee from Rwanda, and her toddler, Gabriel. Unmoored and devastated, Constance and Gabriel quickly come to depend on Marina; and her bond with the little boy intensifies. The pure, blinding love that it is possible to feel for children not our own is the thread that weaves through The Children's House.

When Marina learns some disturbing news about her long-disappeared mother, Gizela, she leaves New York in search of the loose ends of her life. As Christmas nears, her tight-knit, loving family, along with Constance and Gabriel, join Marina in her mother's former home, with a startling consequence, an act that will transform all of their lives forever.

Alice Nelson skilfully weaves together these shared stories about the terrible things humans are capable of into a beautifully told, hope-filled novel exploring the profound consolations that we can find in each other.

By:  
Imprint:   knopf australia
Country of Publication:   Australia
Dimensions:   Height: 233mm,  Width: 156mm,  Spine: 21mm
Weight:   377g
ISBN:   9780143791188
ISBN 10:   0143791184
Pages:   320
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active

After university in Australia, Alice Nelson lived and worked in Harlem, living in the brownstone on 120th Street in which The Children's House is set. While studying in New York, she worked at a non-profit agency run by an order of nuns as a case worker with refugee and undocumented migrant families. Alice was named one of the Sydney Morning Herald's Best Young Australian Novelists for her first novel, The Last Sky. The novel also won the TAG Hungerford Award and was shortlisted for the Australian Society of Authors' Barbara Jefferis Award and for The Australian/Vogel's Literary Award. Alice's short fiction, essays and reviews have appeared in publications such as The Sydney Review of Books, The Asia Literary Review, Southerly Magazine and the West Australian Newspaper. Alice now lives in Perth.

Reviews for The Children's House

ABBEY’S BOOKSELLER PICK —— In exquisitely controlled prose, Alice Nelson has crafted a deeply compassionate novel about our need for safety and belonging, our need to feel at home. Gavin Sladen


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