From the New York Times bestselling author of Mary Coin, a masterful, intimate story of two young girls, joined in an unlikely friendship, whose lives are shattered in a single, unthinkable moment.
Miggy Brenneman is a wild and reckless seven-year-old with a fierce imagination, hellbent on pushing against the limits of childhood. Ellen is polite, cautious, and drawn to her friend's bright flame. While the adults around them adjust to unstable times and fractured relationships, the girls respond with increasingly dangerous play. When tragedy strikes, all the novel's characters grapple with questions of fate and individual responsibility, none more so than Miggy, who must make sense of a swiftly disappearing past and a radically transformed future.
Written with searing clarity and surpassing tenderness, The Mysteries limns the painful ambiguities of adulthood and the intense perceptions of an indelibly drawn child to offer a profound exploration of how all of us, at every stage, must reckon with life's abundant and unsolvable mysteries.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Miggy Brenneman is a wild and reckless seven-year-old with a fierce imagination, hellbent on pushing against the limits of childhood. Ellen is polite, cautious, and drawn to her friend's bright flame. While the adults around them adjust to unstable times and fractured relationships, the girls respond with increasingly dangerous play. When tragedy strikes, all the novel's characters grapple with questions of fate and individual responsibility, none more so than Miggy, who must make sense of a swiftly disappearing past and a radically transformed future.
Written with searing clarity and surpassing tenderness, The Mysteries limns the painful ambiguities of adulthood and the intense perceptions of an indelibly drawn child to offer a profound exploration of how all of us, at every stage, must reckon with life's abundant and unsolvable mysteries.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"With deep clarity and grace Marisa Silver winds this beautiful story of grief and love and of the thread that connects mothers and daughters to each other, and to the work of living." - Jade Chang
"The Mysteries is a profound work of American portraiture. Each of the six interconnected characters in The Mysteries is rendered with masterful specificity, most especially the two vivid little girls around which the worn-out adult world turns. Marisa Silver sees with clear eyes and writes with dignity. Her compassion for ordinary hurt brings to mind the work of William Trevor and Yiyun Li. The Mysteries moved me almost to discomfort, but then released me into a broader understanding of intimacy, childhood, grief, and the very passage of time. Like the best of fiction, this novel broke my heart, then put it back together." - Amity Gaige
"In The Mysteries Marisa Silver faces the big mystery and the lesser, among them the mystery of personality, with her trademark clarity, her gorgeous sentences, to savor and underline, and her all-around brilliance. A Silver novel is always cause for celebration." - Jane Hamilton
"The central question of this richly layered novel asks how well we can truly know another person. The characters here came to life for me and I felt in my bones their loneliness, their sorrow, along with their moments of generosity, their joy. I will think about them and root for them for a long time." - Mary Beth Keane
"Marisa Silver uses language as she would a sharp needle: to stitch, and to puncture, in her examination of people who are as vivid and anxious as the tragic souls of Richard Yates." - Rachel Kushner
"Clear-eyed and devastating, Marisa Silver's The Mysteries is full of wisdom about grief, but also about the joys of childhood. Silver is the rare writer who can write in any register, about any age and state of being." - Karan Mahajan
"Even a loyal, longtime reader of Marisa Silver's outstanding previous stories and novels might be unprepared for the power and delicacy of THE MYSTERIES. I found it to be a novel of almost unbearable intimacy. As one character, Celeste, thinks: "She's never learned to trust the idea of family." For good reason, as the complexities -- and profound mysteries -- of family life form the beating heart of this stunning, uncanny novel." - Peter Orner
"Marisa Silver's vividly alive and wondrously precise THE MYSTERIES stirringly explores marriage, friendship, betrayal and a shattering moment of loss that offers grace and salvation. At its pulsing heart center is the delightful and ungovernable Miggie. A heroine and novel I won't soon forget." - Maria Semple
"This exquisite gem of a novel digs deep into the longings of the human heart. Funny, compassionate, sorrowful, and tender, The Mysteries is an insightful and emotionally astute exploration of how love can both heal and fail us. I couldn't put it down, and I will be thinking about these characters for a very long time." - Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
"The Mysteries is a profound work of American portraiture. Each of the six interconnected characters in The Mysteries is rendered with masterful specificity, most especially the two vivid little girls around which the worn-out adult world turns. Marisa Silver sees with clear eyes and writes with dignity. Her compassion for ordinary hurt brings to mind the work of William Trevor and Yiyun Li. The Mysteries moved me almost to discomfort, but then released me into a broader understanding of intimacy, childhood, grief, and the very passage of time. Like the best of fiction, this novel broke my heart, then put it back together." - Amity Gaige
"In The Mysteries Marisa Silver faces the big mystery and the lesser, among them the mystery of personality, with her trademark clarity, her gorgeous sentences, to savor and underline, and her all-around brilliance. A Silver novel is always cause for celebration." - Jane Hamilton
"The central question of this richly layered novel asks how well we can truly know another person. The characters here came to life for me and I felt in my bones their loneliness, their sorrow, along with their moments of generosity, their joy. I will think about them and root for them for a long time." - Mary Beth Keane
"Marisa Silver uses language as she would a sharp needle: to stitch, and to puncture, in her examination of people who are as vivid and anxious as the tragic souls of Richard Yates." - Rachel Kushner
"Clear-eyed and devastating, Marisa Silver's The Mysteries is full of wisdom about grief, but also about the joys of childhood. Silver is the rare writer who can write in any register, about any age and state of being." - Karan Mahajan
"Even a loyal, longtime reader of Marisa Silver's outstanding previous stories and novels might be unprepared for the power and delicacy of THE MYSTERIES. I found it to be a novel of almost unbearable intimacy. As one character, Celeste, thinks: "She's never learned to trust the idea of family." For good reason, as the complexities -- and profound mysteries -- of family life form the beating heart of this stunning, uncanny novel." - Peter Orner
"Marisa Silver's vividly alive and wondrously precise THE MYSTERIES stirringly explores marriage, friendship, betrayal and a shattering moment of loss that offers grace and salvation. At its pulsing heart center is the delightful and ungovernable Miggie. A heroine and novel I won't soon forget." - Maria Semple
"This exquisite gem of a novel digs deep into the longings of the human heart. Funny, compassionate, sorrowful, and tender, The Mysteries is an insightful and emotionally astute exploration of how love can both heal and fail us. I couldn't put it down, and I will be thinking about these characters for a very long time." - Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney
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