ANNA BRUNO – författare

For fans of Celeste Ng comes a transfixing debut novel about how life’s small decisions can ultimately yield the most powerful consequences.  Everyone always wants to know why relationships fail. It’s a spiteful curiosity thing, schadenfreude, but also a self-preservation thing. People want to understand how to avoid the fall.The answer is complicated. There isn’t one reason, one event. It has something to do with smoking cigarettes and drinking all night. It takes into account thousands of hours of labour on a small house, projects finished and unfinished. It is late-night conversations and inside jokes and making love and having a child. The answer is wrapped up, shrouded and ensconced in prioritization, ambition and work. Caring about these things is not the problem. Not caring about them is death.  Emma has settled into her hometown bar for the evening. It was in this very room that she met Lucas a few years back, on a blind date. Nine months ago, in unimaginable circumstances, they divorced.  As Emma listens to the locals’ banter, key facts about her life story begin to emerge and the past comes bearing down on her like a freight train.A powerhouse in the business world, why has she ended up here, now a regular in the last bar on the edge of a small town? What is she running away from? And what is she willing to give up in order to recapture the love she has lost?  As Emma teeters on the edge of oblivion, becoming more booze-soaked by the hour, her night begins to spin out of control with shocking results.  ‘Seen through keen eyes and full of deep feeling, Ordinary Hazards delves into the psyche of a woman grappling with grief, loss, and the burdens of inheritance. Anna Bruno vividly renders the messiness of a single human life in all its joy and heartbreak.’ —CLAIRE LOMBARDO, author of The Most Fun We Ever Had  ‘Crisp, haunting, and intelligent. Beneath the surface of this booze-soaked, small town, dive bar novel lies a devastating story of loss, guilt, and grief. Bruno’s narrator proves a dark, funny, unflinching companion as you descend with her, step by step, towards the revelation of what has led her to the bar tonight.’ —STEPHEN MARKLEY, author of Ohio'Quiet but emotionally engaging, this atmospheric novel has a raft of enduring characters who prompt her memories. Bruno has a gift for observation which she uses to produce a haunting examination of love, loss and grief.’ —Fanny Blake, Daily Mail

For fans of Celeste Ng comes a transfixing debut novel about how life’s small decisions can ultimately yield the most powerful consequences.  Everyone always wants to know why relationships fail. It’s a spiteful curiosity thing, schadenfreude, but also a self-preservation thing. People want to understand how to avoid the fall.The answer is complicated. There isn’t one reason, one event. It has something to do with smoking cigarettes and drinking all night. It takes into account thousands of hours of labour on a small house, projects finished and unfinished. It is late-night conversations and inside jokes and making love and having a child. The answer is wrapped up, shrouded and ensconced in prioritization, ambition and work. Caring about these things is not the problem. Not caring about them is death.  Emma has settled into her hometown bar for the evening. It was in this very room that she met Lucas a few years back, on a blind date. Nine months ago, in unimaginable circumstances, they divorced.  As Emma listens to the locals’ banter, key facts about her life story begin to emerge and the past comes bearing down on her like a freight train.A powerhouse in the business world, why has she ended up here, now a regular in the last bar on the edge of a small town? What is she running away from? And what is she willing to give up in order to recapture the love she has lost?  As Emma teeters on the edge of oblivion, becoming more booze-soaked by the hour, her night begins to spin out of control with shocking results.  ‘Seen through keen eyes and full of deep feeling, Ordinary Hazards delves into the psyche of a woman grappling with grief, loss, and the burdens of inheritance. Anna Bruno vividly renders the messiness of a single human life in all its joy and heartbreak.’ —CLAIRE LOMBARDO, author of The Most Fun We Ever Had  ‘Crisp, haunting, and intelligent. Beneath the surface of this booze-soaked, small town, dive bar novel lies a devastating story of loss, guilt, and grief. Bruno’s narrator proves a dark, funny, unflinching companion as you descend with her, step by step, towards the revelation of what has led her to the bar tonight.’ —STEPHEN MARKLEY, author of Ohio'Quiet but emotionally engaging, this atmospheric novel has a raft of enduring characters who prompt her memories. Bruno has a gift for observation which she uses to produce a haunting examination of love, loss and grief.’ —Fanny Blake, Daily Mail

When a high-school senior investigates the death of a star hockey player at her elite Jesuit school, she discovers the rot at the heart of the institution-and the truth about her own past along the way.Frankie is a good daughter, a loyal best friend, and a model student, coasting through her final semester at an elite Catholic prep school in a wealthy Pittsburgh enclave. But acceptance to her dream college leaves her unmoored. When a classmate takes his life after posting a cryptic message about Woolf Whiting-a former student hockey player who died in a presumed suicide years earlier-Frankie and her best friend, Shiv, decide to investigate Woolf's death as part of their journalism class project.As the community mourns, a muffled conversation between Frankie's mom, who teaches history at the school, and the priest who teaches her philosophy class draws the girls further into unraveling the mysterious life and death of Woolf. Frankie speaks to his sister, now a high-powered lawyer in New York; his former girlfriend, who Woolf's mother is convinced knows more about his death than she has revealed; and his best friend. As she does, she discovers much more than she expected about the history of her supposed elite education. With a wry, up-the-patriarchy, wise-beyond-her-years narrator in Frankie and a page-turning plot, Fine Young People is Prep meets I Have Some Questions for You-a cold-case mystery with a Hitchcockian twist and a portrait of a young woman searching for meaning in a world that values achievement above all else.

In this "smart, irreverent secret history" novel, a high-school senior investigates the death of a star hockey player at her elite Jesuit school, where she discovers the rot at the heart of the institution-and the truth about her own past along the way (Stewart O'Nan).Frankie is a good daughter, a loyal best friend, and a model student, coasting through her final semester at an elite Catholic prep school in a wealthy Pittsburgh enclave. But acceptance to her dream college leaves her unmoored. When a classmate takes his life after posting a cryptic message about Woolf Whiting-a former student hockey player who died in a presumed suicide years earlier-Frankie and her best friend, Shiv, decide to investigate Woolf's death as part of their journalism class project.As the community mourns, a muffled conversation between Frankie's mom, who teaches history at the school, and the priest who teaches her philosophy class draws the girls further into unraveling the mysterious life and death of Woolf. Frankie speaks to his sister, now a high-powered lawyer in New York; his former girlfriend, who Woolf's mother is convinced knows more about his death than she has revealed; and his best friend. As she does, she discovers much more than she expected about the history of her supposed elite education-and the truth about her own past. With a wry, send-up-the-patriarchy, wise-beyond-her-years narrator and a page-turning plot, Fine Young People is a cold-case mystery with a Hitchcockian twist and a portrait of a young woman searching for meaning in a world that values achievement above all else.