Remember Me Like This

Description

'I love this novel' John Irving 'Excellent' Sunday Times 'Enthralling' New York Times By internationally bestselling author Bret Anthony Johnston, WINNER of the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award 2017. What happens to a family when a lost child returns? In the four years since Justin's abduction his family has become a group of separate units, each nursing their pain and guilt. Now, when they should be at their happiest, how can they forgive each other and become a family again? A gripping literary novel with the pace of a thriller, Remember Me Like This introduces Bret Anthony Johnston as a gifted storyteller.

Bret Anthony Johnston is the author of the award-winning Corpus Christi: Stories, which was described by David Mitchell as 'a gorgeous, accomplished debut', and was named a Best Book of the Year by the Independent and the Irish Times, and the internationally bestselling novel Remember Me Like This, a New York Times Editor's Choice and one of the Observer's best Holiday Reads 2014. His work appears in the Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, the Paris Review, the Best American Short Stories, and elsewhere. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, he's the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship and a 5 Under 35 honor from the National Book Foundation, and the winner of the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award 2017. Previously the Director of Creative Writing at Harvard, he is now the Director of the James A. Michener Center for Writers in Austin, Texas. bretanthonyjohnston.com Facebook/BAJbooks

It has a fascinating fictional premise: a missing child who comes back and a changed family who have to get used to the idea. - Observer (Best Summer Reads 2014) Johnston's excellent debut is primarily a literary novel, with old-fashioned virtues such as rich characterisation, strong structure and impeccable control of tone. Although it is reminiscent of John Updike, the mixture of summer heat and melancholy feels peculiarly Texan - The Sunday Times [an] extraordinary first novel... In his debut, [Johnston] offers an achingly beautiful and psychologically insightful portrait of a family rebuilding after a traumatic event. - Boston Globe it powerfully takes hold... a gripping read and powerful psychological study. - Adelaide Advertiser It is as a writer that I admire the architecture of Remember Me Like This, the novel's flawless storytelling. It is as the father of three sons that I vouch for the psychological authenticity of this depiction of any parents' worst fears. Emotionally, I am with this family as they try to move ahead - embracing 'the half-known and desperate history' that they share. I love this novel. - John Irving, author of A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY and IN ONE PERSON You could say that this book is ripped from the headlines, but that wouldn't be fair. Bret Anthony Johnston's riveting novel picks up where the tabloids leave off, and takes us places even the best journalism can't go. Remember Me Like This is a wise, moving, and troubling novel about family and identity, and a clear-eyed inventory of loss and redemption. - Tom Perrotta, author of LITTLE CHILDREN and THE LEFTOVERS In this deeply nuanced portrait of an American family, Bret Anthony Johnston fearlessly explores the truth behind a mythic happy ending. In Remember Me Like This, Johnston presents an incisive dismantling of an all too comforting fallacy: that in being found we are no longer lost. - Alice Sebold, author of THE LOVELY BONES