Long Wave

A hypnotic and haunting story of longing and survival, losing yourself and finding your family 'Daisy Johnson's best novel... a multi-generational story of secrets, obsessions, and love' Jeff VanderMeer 'Astonishingly beautiful' Kaliane Bradley Close to the shore is the island: uninhabited, wild, with only a storm-beaten lighthouse for shelter. Ori was found there as a small child with a handful of stones, no memories and no mother. When she has a baby of her own, the job of motherhood feels immense and sleepless nights begin to shatter her grip on reality. Her head fills with the sound of stones knocking against each other and the mystery of her past begins to unravel, opening up a path to the mother she lost, and the mother she could become. Years earlier, on a sweltering summer day, ten-year-old Ruth sees a woman and her baby walk into the river and disappear. But she is the only witness, and the water yields no trace. Ruth's mother, Edith, locks her daughter away - first to restrain these wild imaginings, and later, when she falls pregnant, to hide the shame. Ruth longs to escape and dreams of the nearby island, where she and her baby can finally be free. 'A novel of startling force' C Pam Zhang 'An unflinchingly observed treatise on the maelstrom of motherhood. Masterful' Kiran Millwood Hargrave 'A fierce and magical writer' Liz Berry 'At once devastating and heartening' Helen Phillips

Daisy Johnson was born in 1990. Her debut short-story collection, Fen, was published in 2016. In 2018 she became the youngest author ever to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize with her debut novel, Everything Under. Her 2020 novel Sisters was adapted into the 2024 feature film September Says. She is the winner of the Harper's Bazaar Short Story Prize, A. M. Heath Prize and the Edge Hill Short Story Prize. Her debut play, Viola's Room, was produced in 2024 by the immersive theatre company Punchdrunk. She currently lives in Oxford by the river.