$17.00 USD

Overview

A sunburnt psychological thriller of obsession and escape

Cynthia is twenty-one, off-balance, soaked in social media and ennui, and desperately waiting for something, anything, to happen. Her striking fitness instructor, Anahera, is ready to throw in the towel on her job and marriage. Emptying Cynthia’s father’s bank account, they run away, Cynthia’s dog Snot-head in tow, and head for the coast. There they buy Baby, an old boat docked in a beautiful bay, where Cynthia dreams they will live in a state of lurid bliss.

As days pass, things begin to unravel, the boat grows ever more claustrophobic, Cynthia’s moods ever more chaotic, their money stash becomes depleted and a sequence of strange encounters on an empty island turn their lives in an altogether different direction.

Demented, subversive, disorienting, bilious, Baby is a shocking literary debut.

Details

Format
Paperback
Size
5.8in x 8.3in
Extent
272 pages
ISBN
9781947534957
RRP
USD$17.00
Pub date
1 October 2019
Other rights
NZ — Victoria University Press

Categories

Praise

“Sultry, sinister, hilarious and demented, Baby blazes with intelligence and murderous black humor. Heavenly Creatures for a new generation.”

Eleanor Catton, author of Man Booker Prize-winning The Luminaries

“Patricia Highsmith meets reality TV in this compelling debut. Jochems nudges up the tension until we can’t bear to look—and can’t bear to look away: thrilling, dangerous and deliciously funny.”

Catherine Chidgey, prize-winning author of The Wish Child and The Beat of the Pendulum
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About the Author

Annaleese Jochems was born in 1994 and grew up in the far north of New Zealand. She won the 2016 Adam Prize from the International Institute of Modern Letters and the 2018 Hubert Church Best First Book Award for Fiction for Baby, which is her first book.

more about the author