Katherine Carlyle

by Rupert Thomson

Genres: Coming of Age; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

“Katherine Carlyle is a masterpiece.”  —Philip Pullman, best-selling author of the His Dark Materials trilogy
 
“[T]his road trip through a snow dome of mesmeric hallucinations is Thomson at his best.” —Richard Flanagan, author of The Narrow Road to the Deep North, winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize
 
Katherine Carlyle is Rupert Thomson’s breakthrough novel. Written in the beautifully spare, lucid, and cinematic prose Thomson is known for, and powered by his natural gift for storytelling, it uses the modern techniques of IVF to throw new light on the myth of origins. It is a profound and moving novel about identity, the search for personal meaning, and how we are loved.
 
Unmoored by her mother’s death and feeling her father to be an increasingly distant figure, Katherine Carlyle abandons the set course of her life and starts out on a mysterious journey to the ends of the world. Instead of going to college, she disappears, telling no one where she has gone. What begins as an attempt to punish her father for his absence gradually becomes a testing ground of his love for her, a coming-to-terms with the death of her mother, and finally the mise-en-scène for a courageous leap to true empowerment.

Release date: October 6, 2015

Publisher: Other Press

Print pages: 336

Sample

Two days later, on September 8, I flag down a taxi on Corso Vittorio Emanuele II. I have a suitcase with me, and my new umbrella. Draped over my right arm is the cashmere coat my father gave me when I turned eighteen. I’m carrying my passport, several credit cards, and a printout of my boarding pass. Round my neck is my most valuable possession—a small, silver heart-shaped locket containing two pieces of my mother’s hair, one blond and wavy, the other a glinting dark brown, almost metallic. The blond hair is what fell out when she first had chemotherapy. The brown is what grew back. I have closed my deposit account and withdrawn my savings. The money my mother left me. My inheritance. It’s enough to keep me going for a while.
            A few hours earlier, at dawn, I walked to the Ponte Mazzini, my phone in my hand. The city sticky-eyed, hungover. Still half-asleep. I stopped next to a lamppost in the middle of the bridge. White mist drifting above the river, a blurred pink sun. Leaning on the parapet, I held my phone out over the water and then let go. I thought I heard it ringing as it fell. Who would be calling so early? Massimo? Dani? I would never know. […] Back in the apartment I downloaded Eraser and cleaned my hard drive, not just deleting my files but overwriting them so as to make retrieval more or less impossible. I left my laptop under the arch on Via Giulia with a note that said free computer. If I’m to pay proper attention, if this is to work, there’s no option but to disconnect, to simplify. From now on, life will register directly, like a tap on the shoulder or a kiss on the lips. It will be felt.