The Shore

About the book

Longlisted for the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction 2015

Shortlisted for The Sunday Times/PFD Young Writer of the Year Award 2015

Shortlisted for The Guardian First Book Award 2015

The Shore. A collection of small islands sticking out from the coast of Virginia into the Atlantic Ocean. The Shore takes the force of hurricanes, and grows so much food that it rots on the vine. The Shore is clumps of evergreens, wild ponies, oyster-shell roads, tumble-down houses, unwanted pregnancies, murder, storm-making, dark magic in the marshes.

The novel features various generations over the course of 150 years in interconnecting stories, and we observe a sequence of lives on the Shore the small miracles and miseries of a community of outsiders, and the bonds of blood and fate that connect them all. In its audacious interweaving of stories, it recalls David Mitchells Cloud Atlas, Jennifer Egans A Visit from the Goon Squad andUlverton by Adam Thorpe.

Dreamlike and yet impossibly real, profound and playful, THE SHORE is a breathtakingly ambitious and accomplished work of fiction by a young writer of astonishing gifts.

'Remarkable first novel...Taylor is a terrific storyteller with a flawless narrative... this novel is a real achievement... The Shore is a mesmerising, powerful read.' - The Times