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First published in the United States by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
This edition published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2019
Copyright © Tara Conklin 2019
From Moments of Being by Virginia Woolf
Published by Hogarth Press, reprinted by permission of The Random House Group Limited. © 1985
Excerpt of three lines from “The Applicant” from Ariel by Sylvia Plath.
Copyright © 1963 by Ted Hughes. Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.
‘Maps’: Words and Music by Karen Orzolek, Nick Zinner and Brian Chase
Copyright © 2003 Chrysalis Music Ltd.
All Right Administered by BMG Rights Management (US) LLC
All Rights Reserved; Used by Permission
Reprinted by Permission of Hal Leonard LLC
Cover design by Ploy Siripant © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019
Cover illustration by Joel Holland
Tara Conklin asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008323349
Ebook Edition © February 2019 ISBN: 9780008323356
Version: 2019-01-12
Dedicated to the memory of Luella Briody Conklin
and Kenneth Jerome Conklin
For my sisters
Behind the cotton wool is hidden a pattern; that we—I mean all human beings—are connected with this; that the whole world is a work of art; that we are parts of the work of art. Hamlet or a Beethoven quartet is the truth about this vast mass that we call the world. But there is no Shakespeare, there is no Beethoven; certainly and emphatically there is no God; we are the words; we are the music; we are the thing itself.
—Virginia Woolf, Moments of Being
Wait, they don’t love you like I love you.
—Karen O, Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Year 2079