Tara Menon – författare

A BBC RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB PICK A VOGUE BEST DEBUT 2026‘Profoundly moving’ Elif Shafak (on Instagram)'A wonderfully heartfelt debut’ Marie-ClaireA stunning and deeply moving novel of grief, loss and female friendship, set against the backdrop of two cataclysmic natural eventsWhen six-year-old Marissa loses her mother, she is taken by her father to live on a small Thai island in the Andaman Sea. There, she forms a deep friendship with Arielle and together they explore the fragile wonders of its forests, reefs, and beaches. Holding their breath for minutes at a time, they learn to dive into the deep, as effortlessly synchronized as the manta rays they come to know by name. Then, on Boxing Day 2004, when the Indian Ocean tsunami makes landfall, they are swept up by the first wave and separated.Eight years later, Marissa is living in New York. She spends her days wandering through the city and her nights seeking solace in the beds of strangers. As the city prepares for a devastating storm, Marissa reflects on her past and learns how to sustain herself in a precarious world.Under Water is a story about friendship and grief, but also ecological change and natural disasters. It is a meditation on loss, a tribute to our dying oceans and forests, and a love letter to the disappearing coral reefs.‘The horrors of 2004 are told with verve in this debut about a woman haunted by survivor guilt . . . there are stunning descriptions of island wildlife . . . Tara Menon tells the story with confidence and style’ Sunday Times

How direct speech in the novel shapes our understanding of literary characters and their social worldsFor many readers, to think of nineteenth-century fiction is to recall characters speaking: Elizabeth refusing Darcy in Pride and Prejudice; Jane excoriating Rochester in Jane Eyre; Dorothea and Celia discussing Mr. Casaubon in Middlemarch. And yet literary critics have had surprisingly little to say about the narrative effects of dialogue. In Speaking Parts, Tara Menon shows how direct speech—words enclosed in quotation marks that appear to be the exact utterances of characters—shapes our understanding of fictional characters and the social worlds they inhabit. Combining computational tools and close literary analysis, Menon reinstates direct speech to its rightful place in narrative theory, worthy of the critical seriousness afforded to such other features of narrative as free indirect discourse.After quantifying direct speech in nearly one thousand British novels written between 1789 and 1901, Menon turns her attention to several canonical nineteenth-century works of fiction by Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and George Eliot. She considers, among other things, the ways that Austen establishes sympathy for certain characters through her allotment of speech; the narrative significance of speaking characters not given proper names in Jane Eyre; and the social isolation of Dorothea in Middlemarch, as revealed by speech networks. Menon shows not only how the study of direct speech allows us to make new arguments about these well-known texts but also that data analysis of speech can change the way we think about characters, individual novels, and even genres.

How direct speech in the novel shapes our understanding of literary characters and their social worldsFor many readers, to think of nineteenth-century fiction is to recall characters speaking: Elizabeth refusing Darcy in Pride and Prejudice; Jane excoriating Rochester in Jane Eyre; Dorothea and Celia discussing Mr. Casaubon in Middlemarch. And yet literary critics have had surprisingly little to say about the narrative effects of dialogue. In Speaking Parts, Tara Menon shows how direct speech—words enclosed in quotation marks that appear to be the exact utterances of characters—shapes our understanding of fictional characters and the social worlds they inhabit. Combining computational tools and close literary analysis, Menon reinstates direct speech to its rightful place in narrative theory, worthy of the critical seriousness afforded to such other features of narrative as free indirect discourse.After quantifying direct speech in nearly one thousand British novels written between 1789 and 1901, Menon turns her attention to several canonical nineteenth-century works of fiction by Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, and George Eliot. She considers, among other things, the ways that Austen establishes sympathy for certain characters through her allotment of speech; the narrative significance of speaking characters not given proper names in Jane Eyre; and the social isolation of Dorothea in Middlemarch, as revealed by speech networks. Menon shows not only how the study of direct speech allows us to make new arguments about these well-known texts but also that data analysis of speech can change the way we think about characters, individual novels, and even genres.

A BBC RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB PICK BBC CULTURE ‘BOOKS TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2026’A VOGUE BEST DEBUT 2026‘Profoundly moving’ Elif Shafak (on Instagram)‘The horrors of 2004 are told with verve in this debut about a woman haunted by survivor guilt . . . there are stunning descriptions of island wildlife . . . Tara Menon tells the story with confidence and style’ Sunday TimesA stunning and deeply moving literary debut of grief, loss and female friendship, set against the backdrop of two cataclysmic natural events.When six-year-old Marissa loses her mother, she is taken by her father to live on a small Thai island in the Andaman Sea. There, she forms a deep friendship with Arielle and together they explore the fragile wonders of its forests, reefs, and beaches. Holding their breath for minutes at a time, they learn to dive into the deep, as effortlessly synchronized as the manta rays they come to know by name. Then, on Boxing Day 2004, when the Indian Ocean tsunami makes landfall, they are swept up by the first wave and separated.Eight years later, Marissa is living in New York. She spends her days wandering through the city and her nights seeking solace in the beds of strangers. As the city prepares for a devastating storm, Marissa reflects on her past and learns how to sustain herself in a precarious world.Under Water is a story about friendship and grief, but also ecological change and natural disasters. It is a meditation on loss, a tribute to our dying oceans and forests, and a love letter to the disappearing coral reefs.

A BBC RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB PICK BBC CULTURE ‘BOOKS TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2026’A VOGUE BEST DEBUT 2026‘Compelling and heart wrenching, a remarkable debut’ Claire MessudA stunning and deeply moving literary debut of grief, loss and female friendship, set against the backdrop of two cataclysmic natural events.When six-year-old Marissa loses her mother, she is taken by her father to live on a small Thai island in the Andaman Sea. There, she forms a deep friendship with Arielle and together they explore the fragile wonders of its forests, reefs, and beaches. Holding their breath for minutes at a time, they learn to dive into the deep, as effortlessly synchronized as the manta rays they come to know by name. Then, on Boxing Day 2004, when the Indian Ocean tsunami makes landfall, they are swept up by the first wave and separated.Eight years later, Marissa is living in New York. She spends her days wandering through the city and her nights seeking solace in the beds of strangers. As the city prepares for a devastating storm, Marissa reflects on her past and learns how to sustain herself in a precarious world.Under Water is a story about friendship and grief, but also ecological change and natural disasters. It is a meditation on loss, a tribute to our dying oceans and forests, and a love letter to the disappearing coral reefs.‘A remarkable study of grief, set against the backdrop of ecological disaster.’ The New World ‘Books to Look Out for in 2026’‘A beautifully written novel of grief, friendship and the natural world’ Mail on Sunday ‘Books to Look Out for in 2026’

A stunning and deeply moving literary debut of grief, loss and female friendship, set against the backdrop of two cataclysmic natural events.When six-year-old Marissa loses her mother, she is taken by her father to live on a small Thai island in the Andaman Sea. There, she forms a deep friendship with Arielle and together they explore the fragile wonders of its forests, reefs, and beaches. Holding their breath for minutes at a time, they learn to dive into the deep, as effortlessly synchronized as the manta rays they come to know by name. Then, on Boxing Day 2004, when the Indian Ocean tsunami makes landfall, they are swept up by the first wave and separated.Eight years later, Marissa is living in New York. She spends her days wandering through the city and her nights seeking solace in the beds of strangers. As the city prepares for a devastating storm, Marissa reflects on her past and learns how to sustain herself in a precarious world.Under Water is a story about friendship and grief, but also ecological change and natural disasters. It is a meditation on loss, a tribute to our dying oceans and forests, and a love letter to the disappearing coral reefs.“A novel of remarkable delicacy and power, Under Water is about grief, friendship, home, and longing. Menon writes exquisite sentences, sensual and particular, each containing an entire world.”—Katie Kitamura, author of Audition and Intimacies"Tara Menon beautifully evokes the intensity of a young woman's lost friendship, and the extraordinary natural world - on land and in the ocean - in which that friendship was forged. Under Water, in equal measure compelling and heart wrenching, is a remarkable debut. " —Claire Messud, author of This Strange Eventful History and The Emperor’s Children“Reading Under Water is like being under water: immersive and stirring, pellucid and mysterious, shot through with light and with shades, overwhelming and exquisite–in a word, sublime.” —Namwali Serpell, author of The Old Drift and The Furrows