Claire Fuller

Praise

• A book of survival, consequences and connection.

  —The Boston Globe, A Best Book of Summer

• Imagine a ‘Lord of the Flies’ where everyone on the island has opted in; or a ‘Breakfast Club’ where anyone who leaves dies. . . . It’s a neat trick that Fuller pulls off, weaving together so many familiar threads, from the post-pandemic storyline to the extremity-in-isolation scenario to the life story reconceived under duress, and yet coming up with a new and promising pattern—an authorial performance in keeping with her generous character.

  —The Washington Post

• A haunting novel of second chances.

  —Publishers Weekly, Starred Review

• No mere survival story, the novel explores the isolation and grief that comes with outliving the people with whom you have unfinished business.

  —The Philadelphia Inquirer, A Best Book of June

• Brings to mind Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven and Sequoia Nagamatsu’s How High We Go in the Dark.

  —LitHub, A Best SciFi & Fantasy Book of June

• A thrilling departure from our reality.

  —Good Housekeeping

• Fuller excels in examining the everyday moments at the heart of a life. . . . A memorable meditation on how the human struggle to survive in captivity is not so different than that of our animal kin.

  —Kirkus Reviews

• Makes us ponder what we owe each other as humans.

  —Booklist

• A fascinating and suspenseful story of shame, penance, and survival.

  —Bustle

• The Memory of Animals has done the impossible—made me eagerly anticipate a novel that involves a pandemic in the year 2023. It’s also got: experimental technology that allows users to revisit their memories, marine biology, and promises to be an immersive, thought-provoking, and haunting-in-a-good-way literary masterwork.

  —Powell's

• Infused with both surprise and recognition, The Memory of Animals looks at the impossible choices sometimes required for survival.

  —Electric Literature, Best Small Press Books of Summer

• Stunning. . . . Sobering and evocative, The Memory of Animals is a novel about who we choose to be when the lights go out.

  —Foreword Reviews, Starred Review

• When Fuller releases something, you should probably pay attention. This dystopia is giving off thriller vibes with its pandemic reality, the complications of squid, and survival.

  —Independent Book Review

• Compelling. . . . Riveting. . . . long-time Fuller readers will relish this completely engrossing story, which questions what we value most.

  —Library Journal, Starred Review

• An unsettling search for survival.

  —Tor

• Stands out in the new wave of pandemic literature in the ways it captures the emotional toll of isolation.. . . Fuller has created a heartwarming portrait of what it means to find hope at the end of the world and carry on, not only for those you lost, but for those you found in the aftermath.

  —West Trade Review

• Brisk, lucid…. The Memory of Animals is at its most powerful when it functions like a kind of Covid Revisitor for readers, evoking subtler memories of uncertainty, freedom, and enclosure—of trying, when all else is stripped away, to figure out what we owe one another.

  —Southern Humanities Review

• A layered and smart narrative. . . . Ms. Fuller wisely foreshadows while also leaving readers guessing when the other shoe will drop.

  —The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

• An imaginative blend of science and spirit. . . . Claire Fuller has siphoned all of the beauty of being human into this work.

  —Arkansas International

• Between wanting to do the right thing and the vortex of mistakes from the past there is a real place, one woven from danger and desire. Claire Fuller’s riveting novel, The Memory of Animals, creates a world within a world where a young woman marine biologist faces off with a global pandemic and the hopes for a vaccine by diving into her own past. She might retrieve some fragment that could secure self-preservation as well as—if not humanity, then at least the human heart.

  —Lidia Yuknavitch, author of Thrust

• Claire Fuller is my favorite storyteller. I read The Memory of Animals in one sitting, swept up by the thriller-like pace and the sheer joy of reading a great story. Yet, in the book’s aftermath, I was haunted by Neffy’s fumbling humanity in the face of loss and fear, and how courage isn’t always obvious—even to those who find it. Fuller’s books come in at the eyes, but they settle right behind the heart.

  —Melanie Finn, author of The Hare

• Claire Fuller is such an interesting and original writer and takes on complex themes with such a cool, clear eye. In The Memory of Animals she has produced another literary page-turner. The collision between altruism and the survival instinct at the heart of the book is brilliantly dramatized and her disturbing vision of post-pandemic moral collapse is compulsive and thoroughly convincing. Terrific!

  —Clare Chambers, author of Small Pleasures

• Haunting and unsettling, moving and thoughtful—with horror lurking at the edges—this is a subtle, elegant novel, an interesting and unusual take on the meaning of pandemic. Claire Fuller is a huge talent.

  —Lucy Atkins, author of Windmill Hill

• Claire Fuller is a fascinating writer, and The Memory of Animals is further evidence of her powers. Her story is one of survival, but her subject is humanity itself. With immense skill, she shines a light on the dark heart of our existence—the beauty and brutality of human behavior. An unforgettable novel.

  —Kathleen MacMahon, author of The Home Scar

• Full of jeopardy and strangeness, but also laced with Fuller’s trademark generosity and compassion, a startling and satisfying book.

  —Julie Myerson, author of Nonfiction

• Timeless. . . . [a] shadowy family saga, which is marked by illicit love, violence and blood debts.

  —The Wall Street Journal

• Engrossing.

  —Entertainment Weekly

• A simple but powerful story of rural poverty, sibling relationships and, perhaps above all, resilience.

  —PureWow

• Powerful. . . . fascinating.

  —BookRiot

• A quiet tale of loss and survival.

  —Good Housekeeping

• Transfixing.

  —Chicago Review of Books

• An unnerving and emotional novel of family secrets, vulnerability and resilience.

  —Shelf Awareness

• A winner.

  —The Center for Fiction

• Rapturous.

  —The San Diego Union Tribune

• One mystery after another arises and two siblings who have been left behind by the modern world face changes both gentle and profound.

  —The Daily Beast

• A darkly poignant novel about an unusual family.

  —Texas Public Radio

• Revelatory. . . .  a powerful, beautiful novel.

  —The Times (UK)

• Fuller explores the painful realities of poverty and social isolation with immense sensitivity in this multilayered and emotionally astute novel.

  —The Guardian

• An intriguing premise made more so by the paucity of novels featuring vulnerable older adults.

  —Financial Times

• Superb.

  —Daily Mail

• If you’re a reader who lives for contemplative storytelling and perfectly wrought characters, this author is for you.

  —BookPage

• Ambitious.

  —The TLS

• A page-turner. . . . reflecting the humble beauty of country life in every page, Unsettled Ground will appeal to a wide array of readers.

  —Harvard Review

• An intriguing, moving novel that will make you question assumptions you have about modern life.

  —Tracy Chevalier

• A book like Unsettled Ground is why we read. . . . Written with tenderness and beauty, Unsettled Ground is not to be missed.

  —Sherri Gallentine, Vroman’s Bookstore, BuzzFeed Best Books of Spring as Recommended by Booksellers

• A gorgeously written and moving portrait of a family struggling against time.

  —Lucy Tan, author of What We Were Promised

• Another sly psychological treat from Claire Fuller, who just keeps on getting better with each book.

  —Laline Paull, author of The Ice

• Fuller’s prose is darkly elegant, her eye for character astute and humane, and her sense of place vividly atmospheric—here is a writer of great skill, sensitivity, and subtlety.

  —Lucy Atkins, author of Magpie Lane

• Claire Fuller strikes the perfect balance between beauty and melancholy in this relevant and powerful exploration of isolation and life on the fringes of society.

  —Clare Mackintosh, author of After the End

• Fuller has created a propulsive story that readers can’t help but get caught up in.

  —Necessary Fiction

• Prepare for an experience of the English countryside that’s somewhat at
  odds with its typically idyllic depiction. . . . As the title suggests,
  at each turn there’s something new and unexpected.

  —Bookmarks

• Wonderful. Unsettled Ground is a beautifully constructed book with interesting characters, and I’m convinced I won’t read a better one this year.

  —Ron Rash, The Boston Globe

• Suffused with gorgeous little details.

  —Feminist Book Club

• Fascinating.

  —The Star (Canada)

• [Fuller’s] absorbing novel unsettles us with its fine evocation of life’s fragility while grounding us in the healing powers of love, loyalty and nature’s bounty.

  —Independent (IRE)

• A story full of secrets in which nothing is quite as it seems.

  —New Books Network Podcast

• Beautiful and intriguing.

  —Across the Pond Podcast

• Devastatingly haunting.

  —Booklist, Starred Review

• Evocative. . . . Fuller builds suspense over the twins’ fate and ends with a brilliant twist.

  —Publishers Weekly

• You’ll find yourself desperately rooting for Julius and Jeannie.

  —The Weekly Reader

• Fuller is a master of building suspense. . . . At once unsettling and hopeful, her book checks all the boxes of an engrossing mystery.

  —Kirkus Reviews

• Fuller, a skilled stylist, is very good at letting you know Frances by degrees and at describing a setting in which the ordinary rules of life feel suspended . . . You can taste the wine, smell the musty fabrics and the overripe fruit, hear the hum of lazy insects and track the teasing suggesting that something will go terribly wrong.

  —The New York Times Book Review

• Bitter Orange twists and bends, arouses and agitates, like a seductive nightmare. . . . With sensations so alive on the page, you’re constantly kept on your toes, attuned to the mania. You’ll ask, beguiled: What’s really going on here?

  —Entertainment Weekly

• In her finely crafted psychological thriller Bitter Orange, the devilish novelist gives us a sunny, summery, open backdrop that nevertheless becomes a vise tightening around the throats of both the main character and the reader. Formula and genre can themselves be as suffocating as a coffin, but in such capable hands they become freeing, reinvigorated, and compelling.

  —NPR

• Page by page, Fuller enchants us with prose as thick as clotted cream, only for us to realize too late that she’s been ensnaring us at every turn.

  —The Paris Review

• Lovely and lush prose that only adds to the sense of dread pervading the novel . . . Bitter Orange is an absorbing exploration of the many lies we tell to others—and to ourselves.

  —Vulture, Best Crime Books of the Year

• English mansion? Check. Dazzling couple? Check. Yearning outsider? Now you have all the ingredients for a psychological powder keg, ready to explode during the summer of ’69.

  —Elle, Most Anticipated Books of Fall

• Fuller is a master of the quietly eerie; she’s excellent at creating an aura of pervasive dread—and sustaining it till the very last page.

  —NYLON, Best Books of Fall

• Cannily releasing clues on the way to an explosive finale, Fuller moves fluidly between the time of the story and a period 20 years later . . . The lush setting and remarkable characters make for an immersive mystery.

  —Publishers Weekly

• In the vein of Shirley Jackson’s bone-chilling The Haunting of Hill House, Fuller’s disturbing novel will entrap readers in its twisty narrative, leaving them to reckon with what is real and what is unreal. An intoxicating, unsettling masterpiece.

  —Kirkus, Starred Review

• Fuller is a master of propulsive action, making the ground spin as each unreliable narrator takes center stage. Every measured sentence builds on itself with the crumbling estate providing the saturated backdrop for this ultimately macabre tale. Bitter Orange offers a gripping and unsettling look at the ugly side of extreme need and the desperate measures taken in the name of love.

  —Booklist, Starred Review

• Fuller’s writing is seductive, brooding, twisty—it unsettles you quietly, slowly.

  —Goop

• A literary mystery that fans of Sarah Waters, Daphne Du Maurier, and Shirley Jackson won’t want to miss. . . . This high intrigue, along with the inherent eeriness of the setting, makes Bitter Orange a perfect fall read.

  —Criminal Element

• Exquisitely written and carefully paced, Bitter Orange imbues the dis-ease and sickening sweetness of old-fashioned literary horror with a new, modern flare . . . A haunting contemporary echo of Shirley Jackson and Patricia Highsmith.

  —Shelf Awareness, Starred Review

• A twisty, thorny, darkly atmospheric page turner.

  —Gabriel Tallent, New York Times bestselling author of My Absolute Darling

• Like Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, Bitter Orange sings, enchants, haunts. If not for Claire Fuller’s stunning language and mastery of control, I’d have succumbed to the temptation to blaze through these pages just to see how the suspense resolves. A beautiful novel.

  —Daniel Magariel, author of One of the Boys

• A rich, dark pressure cooker of a novel that simmers with slow heat and suppressed tension.

  —Ruth Ware, New York Times bestselling author of The Woman in Cabin 10

• Claire Fuller is such an elegant writer and this book is incredibly atmospheric, vivid, and intriguing. I had to keep reminding myself that I wasn’t reading a forgotten classic.

  —Emma Healey, author of Elizabeth Is Missing

• As she did in her first novel, Our Endless Numbered Days (2015), Fuller proves to be a master of temporal space, taking readers through flashbacks and epistolary chapters at a pace timed to create wonder and suspense. It’s her beautiful prose, though, that rounds this one out, as she delves deeply to examine the legacies of a flawed and passionate marriage.

  —Booklist, STARRED REVIEW

• As in her gorgeously harrowing Our Endless Numbered Days, Claire Fuller returns to the territory of a mother’s disappearance and a father’s lies with bewitching and page-turning results. If anything, Swimming Lessons is an even more complex puzzle box of a book, excavating darkly knotted family secrets, intricately cruel betrayals and layers of ambiguous loss. Fuller is so clear eyed, poised and psychologically shrewd in the unfolding of her tale, you will be kept guessing until the final penetrating sentence. An extraordinarily smart and satisfying read.

  —Paula McLain, author of THE PARIS WIFE

• Swimming Lessons continues Claire Fuller’s mastery of beautiful language and heartbreaking imagery, which lays bare the stories of infidelities, lies, revivals of love and then demise of those loves.  The women of this novel fight for their very souls, and their stories unfurl like flags of independence appearing in to wave from her landscape of great books and art and hope

  —Susan Straight, author of BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HERE

• Claire Fuller has captured love in its fullest form, nursed on betrayal and regret and guilt. Gil cheats on and abandons his wife too many times, until she disappears, leaving her clothing on the beach, and he can’t know even if she’s still alive. She leaves only letters, hidden in a great library of books, and he’ll search for her until his end. Swimming Lessons is so smoothly, beautifully written, and the human failures here are heartbreaking.

  —David Vann, author of AQUARIUM

• Claire Fuller’s acrobatic new novel, about a family who has failed each other, inverts our expectations of narrative time to an astonishing effect: our experience of grasping for truth about those who have left is just as pained and urgent as her characters’. Fuller’s sentences are condensed maps of the human process, unfolding in patterns we immediately recognize.

  —Kathleen Alcott, author of INFINITE HOME

• Swimming Lessons hovers in the electric space between secrets and connection, between the desire to love and urge to hide. This is a biting, soaring novel.

  —Ramona Ausubel, author of SONS AND DAUGHTERS OF EASE AND PLENTY and NO ONE IS HERE EXCEPT ALL OF US

• Fuller’s tale is eloquent, harrowing, raw . . . [this] mystery is sure to keep readers inching off their seats.

  —Kirkus Reviews

• Saving the best for last with revelations and surprises, Fuller’s well-crafted, intricate tale captures the strengths and shortcomings of ordinary people to show how healing is possible by confronting the darkest places.

  —Library Journal, STARRED REVIEW

• When everything we read or watch these days seems to be a facsimile of something else, it’s inspiring when a writer of Claire Fuller’s talent comes along to give us something fresh and original. In Swimming Lessons, Fuller explores the all too familiar pull of duty, expectation, and guilt between a family in emotional turmoil with an unsentimental eye, recalling some of the best work of the late, great Richard Yates. Fuller’s debut novel, Our Endless Numbered Days, was nothing short of brilliant and I’m here to tell you that she has officially avoided a sophomore slump with this gem of a book. My only complaint is that I have to wait until January of 2017 to share this with the reading public. Claire Fuller is my new favorite.

  —Javier Ramirez, The Book Table

• Claire Fuller is a master of the psychological mystery. In her most recent novel, Swimming Lessons, no one is running around with a gun and no physical violence occurs. And yet damage happens. Families are cut to the bone. And lingering wounds are left festering into adulthood. This is a work that explores the very nature of forgiveness: how much should be forgiven before it becomes a burden, or before it becomes a secret life inside you until you can”t even forgive yourself? It’s a deliciously written story within a story that isn’t over until the last page has been turned.

  —Pam Cady, University Book Store

• With Swimming Lessons, Claire Fuller confirms her place as a writer of exceptional insight and warmth. This tale of a marriage, of a family, and especially of children bearing the brunt of the fallout of betrayals and abandonment, pulls you in and refuses to let you emerge from the lives of its characters until the tale is finally told. Even then it takes time to shake the spell the book creates. A wonderful follow-up to OUR ENDLESS NUMBERED DAYS that explores similar themes through an entirely different story, Swimming Lessons will be a great book for fans of her first novel and for new fans alike.

  —Anmiryam Budner, Main Point Books

• Claire Fuller’s Swimming Lessons is a beautifully told literary mystery that weaves together the lives and loves of people defined by deceit and a questionable disappearance. Like her debut novel, Our Endless Numbered Days, Fuller tiptoes brilliantly through delicate subjects.

  —Joanne Berg, Mystery to Me

• I loved it and was caught up in it so thoroughly that it was my companion during every meal I ate until I finished the book. I have also never felt so inclined to leave marginalia in a book as I did after reading Swimming Lessons.

  —Katie Orphan, The Last Bookstore

•  I could not put Swimming Lessons down and read it in one sitting! It lingered in my thoughts long after I finished. Marvelous! A must read!

  —Stephanie Crowe, Page and Palette Bookstore