The Boy in the Field: A Novel
Aug 2020 · HarperCollins
4.3star
3 reviews
Ebook
268
Pages
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About this ebook
“[An] exquisite . . . whodunit. . . . But the real mysteries lie . . . compellingly with the characters who are witnesses to the crime. . . . quiet, observant . . . cinematic.” —New York Times Book Review
One September afternoon in 1999, teenagers Matthew, Zoe, and Duncan Lang are walking home from school when they discover a boy lying in a field, bloody and unconscious. Thanks to their intervention, the boy’s life is saved. In the aftermath, all three siblings are irrevocably changed.
Matthew, the oldest, becomes obsessed with tracking down the assailant, secretly searching the local town with the victim’s brother. Zoe wanders the streets of Oxford, looking at men, and one of them, a visiting American graduate student, looks back. Duncan, the youngest, who has seldom thought about being adopted, suddenly decides he wants to find his birth mother. Overshadowing all three is the awareness that something is amiss in their parents’ marriage. Over the course of the autumn, as each of the siblings confronts the complications and contradictions of their approaching adulthood, they find themselves at once drawn together and driven apart.
The Boy in the Field showcases Margot Livesey’s unmatched ability to “tell her tale masterfully, with intelligence, tenderness, and a shrewd understanding of all our mercurial human impulses” (Lily King, author of Euphoria).
“Luminous, unforgettable, and perfectly rendered.” —Dennis Lehane, New York Times bestselling author of Mystic River
“Filled with dazzling insights and beauty.” —People Magazine
“[Livesey’s novels are] successful at making the rich subtext of feeling, memory, and difficult life decisions mulled over, the main event of her stories.” —New York Journal of Book
“Powerfully affecting.” —Kirkus, starred review
“A masterful tapestry of emotion and action.” —Booklist, starred review
One September afternoon in 1999, teenagers Matthew, Zoe, and Duncan Lang are walking home from school when they discover a boy lying in a field, bloody and unconscious. Thanks to their intervention, the boy’s life is saved. In the aftermath, all three siblings are irrevocably changed.
Matthew, the oldest, becomes obsessed with tracking down the assailant, secretly searching the local town with the victim’s brother. Zoe wanders the streets of Oxford, looking at men, and one of them, a visiting American graduate student, looks back. Duncan, the youngest, who has seldom thought about being adopted, suddenly decides he wants to find his birth mother. Overshadowing all three is the awareness that something is amiss in their parents’ marriage. Over the course of the autumn, as each of the siblings confronts the complications and contradictions of their approaching adulthood, they find themselves at once drawn together and driven apart.
The Boy in the Field showcases Margot Livesey’s unmatched ability to “tell her tale masterfully, with intelligence, tenderness, and a shrewd understanding of all our mercurial human impulses” (Lily King, author of Euphoria).
“Luminous, unforgettable, and perfectly rendered.” —Dennis Lehane, New York Times bestselling author of Mystic River
“Filled with dazzling insights and beauty.” —People Magazine
“[Livesey’s novels are] successful at making the rich subtext of feeling, memory, and difficult life decisions mulled over, the main event of her stories.” —New York Journal of Book
“Powerfully affecting.” —Kirkus, starred review
“A masterful tapestry of emotion and action.” —Booklist, starred review
Ratings and reviews
4.3
3 reviews
About the author
Margot Livesey is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels The Flight of Gemma Hardy, The House on Fortune Street, Banishing Verona, Eva Moves the Furniture, The Missing World, Criminals, and Homework. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, Vogue, and the Atlantic, and she is the recipient of grants from both the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. The House on Fortune Street won the 2009 L. L. Winship/PEN New England Award. Born in Scotland, Livesey currently lives in the Boston area and is a professor of fiction at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
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