The Sentimentalists

Haunted by the horrific events he witnessed during the Vietnam War, Napoleon Haskell is exhausted from years spent battling his memories. As his health ultimately declines, his two daughters move him from his trailer in North Dakota to Casablanca, Ontario, to live with the father of Napoleon's friend who was killed in action. It is to Casablanca, on the shores of a man-made lake beneath which lie the remains of the former town, that Napoleon's youngest daughter also retreats when her own life comes unhinged. Living with the two old men, she finds her father in the twilight of his life and rapidly slipping into senility. With love and insatiable curiosity, she devotes herself to learning the truth about him; and through the fog, Napoleon's past begins to emerge.

Beautiful, taut and riveting, The Sentimentalists is a story of what lies beneath the surface of the everyday, and of the commanding power of the past. Drawing on her own experience as a war veteran's daughter, Skibsrud's novel captures the rich complexities encountered by a woman seeking to comprehend and frankly express the truth - in all its fragility - about her life and her family.


Genre: Literary Fiction

"Johanna Skibsrud's remarkable debut is a novel at once lyrical and frank, the resonantly layered portrait of a man, a family and a place that will stay with you long after you read the last page." - Claire Messud

"A probing exploration - now subtle, oblique, now forensic, scalpel-sharp - of the ramifications of a person's experience through the lives and relationships of those he loves. Of the way in which what we do, and witness, echoes through our lives, and the next generation's." - Tim Pears