PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY

Close Notification

Your cart does not contain any items

$35

Hardback

Not in-store but you can order this
How long will it take?

QTY:

English
Fourth Estate Ltd
01 December 2021
‘America’s preeminent fiction writer’ New Yorker

‘A raw, propulsive tale of love and grief’ Mail on Sunday

Michaela and her husband have moved to the starkly beautiful but uncanny landscape of New Mexico, to take residency at a distinguished academic institute. But then Gerard is stricken with a mysterious illness, initially misdiagnosed, and soon their life begins to resemble a nightmare. At thirty-seven, Michaela faces the terrifying prospect of widowhood – and the loss of Gerard, whose identity has greatly shaped her own.

In vividly depicted scenes of escalating suspense, Michaela cares desperately for Gerard in his final days, and then careens through the chaos of the days after he is gone. Her love for her husband, however fierce and selfless, has not been enough to save him and his death is beyond her comprehension.  A love that refuses to be surrendered at death – is this the blessing of a unique married love, or a curse that must be exorcized?

Breathe is an exploration of haunting, a horror story about the raw madness of grief, and an intense, heart-wrenching love story that grapples with the philosophical questions most fundamental to our existence.

By:  
Imprint:   Fourth Estate Ltd
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 240mm,  Width: 159mm,  Spine: 33mm
Weight:   610g
ISBN:   9780008490881
ISBN 10:   0008490880
Pages:   384
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active

Joyce Carol Oates is a recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award and the PEN / Malamud Award, and has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Her books include We Were the Mulvaneys, Blonde, Carthage, A Book of American Martyrs and Hazards of Time Travel. She is Professor of Humanities at Princeton University.

Reviews for Breathe

Praise for Breathe: ‘The dizzyingly prolific Oates returns with a raw, propulsive tale of love and grief. It unfolds against the stark landscape of New Mexico, where 37-year-old Michaela’s older husband, a Harvard professor, has taken up an academic residency, only to be stricken with a fatal illness. In the nightmarish moths that follow, Michaela cares for him with desperate devotion; in the aftermath, her struggle to accept his loss sends her hurtling towards a hallucinatory denouement’ Hephzibah Anderson, Mail on Sunday ‘The myth of Orpheus and Eurydice and the demon-gods of the Native American Pueblo people combine to nightmarish effect in Joyce’s unrelenting latest, which is set against the uncanny landscape of New Mexico … nothing in her hallucinatory horror equals the simple, devastating awfulness of the moment when Michaela discovers her dying partner, his brilliant mind now addled with opioids, trying to read his paper upside down’ Stephanie Cross, Daily Mail ‘Breathe is a fever dream of a novel, and it’s as an allegory of grief that it most sparkles. What appears to be hallucination is actually more emotionally complicated’ Joshua Henkin, New York Times


See Inside

See Also