The Anniversary - Paperback

by Stephanie Bishop (Author)

For fans of Lisa Halliday and Susan Choi, The Anniversary is a simmering page-turner about an ascendant writer, the unresolved death of her husband, and what it takes to emerge on her own

Novelist J.B. Blackwood is on a cruise with her husband, Patrick, to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Her former professor, film director, and cult figure, Patrick is much older than J.B.. When they met, he seemed somehow ageless, as all gods appear in the eyes of those who worship them. But now his success is starting to wane and J.B. is on the cusp of winning a major literary prize. Her art has been forever overseen by him, now it may overshadow his.

For days they sail in the sun, nothing but dark water all around them. Then a storm hits and Patrick falls from the ship. J.B. is left alone, as the search for what happened to Patrick - and the truth about their marriage - begins.

Propulsive and fiercely intelligent, The Anniversary is exquisitely written with a swift and addictive plot. It's a novel that asks: how legible, in the mind of the writer, is the line between reality and plot? How do we refuse the people we desire? And what is the cost, to ourselves, to others and to our art, if we don't?

Author Biography

Stephanie Bishop was recently appointed professor in Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. Her criticism and fiction have appeared in the London Review of Books, the TLS, and the Sydney Review of Books. She is the author of Man Out of Time and The Other Side of the World, a Literary Fiction Book of the Year in the Australian Book Industry Awards 2016 and winner of The Readings Prize for New Australian Writing 2015. It was also shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, the Indie Book Awards and the NSW Premier's Literary Awards and longlisted for the 2016 Stella Prize.