Ripeness

Start your Sunday in the company of Sarah Moss, the extraordinary author of Summerwater, Ghost Wall, and The Fell. Her sweeping new novel, Ripeness, will transport you from 60s Italy to contemporary Ireland, weaving a rich tapestry of familial love, the communities we create, migration, new beginnings, and what it truly means to belong.

On the brink of adulthood and just out of school, Edith finds herself travelling to rural Italy. She has been sent by her mother with strict instructions: to see her sister, ballet dancer Lydia, through the final weeks of her pregnancy, help at the birth and then make a phone call which will seal this baby’s fate, and his mother’s.

Decades later, happily divorced and newly energized, Edith is living a life of contentment and comfort in Ireland. When her best friend Maebh receives a call from an American man claiming to be her brother, Maebh must decide if she will meet him, and Edith finds herself plunged back into her own past and her memories of a lost love.

Sarah will be in conversation with poet Erica Hesketh.

‘The achievement of a lifetime, written by one of the best writers alive’  Jessie Burton

‘A book of lasting pleasures’ Eleanor Catton

‘Her work is as close to perfect as a novelist’s can be’ The Times

Sarah Moss has written several novels including the Sunday Times top ten bestseller Summerwater (being adapted for television by Channel 4) and Ghost Wall, which was longlisted for the Women’s Prize. She has also written two works of memoir, Names for the Sea, an account of her year living in Iceland, and My Good Bright Wolf which will also be published in Spring 2025. Sarah Moss was born in Glasgow and grew up in the north of England. After moving between Oxford, Canterbury, Reykjavik, west Cornwall and the Midlands, she now lives in Dublin.