‘It was always hard to tell where our marriage ended, and my work began. I often dream now that I am drifting in a dark sea, the water around me lukewarm, like blood.’
Novelist J.B. Blackwood is on a cruise with her husband, Patrick, to celebrate their wedding anniversary.
Patrick is older than J.B., formerly her professor. But now his success is starting to wane and hers may overshadow his.
For days they sail in the sun. They lie about drinking, reading, sleeping, having sex. There is nothing but dark water all around them.
Then a storm hits, and Patrick falls off the ship. J.B. is left alone, as the search for what happened to Patrick – and the truth about their marriage – begins.
With a stay-up-all-night plot and breathtaking prose, this is the haunting and unforgettable story of a marriage and a death
‘Dangerously readable’ Observer
‘Stunning’ i paper
‘Electrifying’ Sunday Times
‘Magnificent’ Joanna Cannon
‘Compulsive’ Financial Times
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Reviews
The sense of foreboding increases as the narrative progresses and I found it impossible to put down. It's excellent on how a partner's resentment can grow until it explodes as if from nowhere. It's also wonderful on writing itself and how our protagonists both enable and block each other's process. I adored it.
Dangerously readable . . . If only all literary novels were this engaging and this perceptive about human nature
The Anniversary is a compulsive yet redemptive book layered with nuances that will have those new to Bishop's work hunting out her backlist.
I very much enjoyed The Anniversary. It put me in mind of Gone Girl and of Fleishman Is in Trouble too. It nails so much about how ruthless a writer of fiction needs to be both in relation to life and material
Stephanie Bishop's The Anniversary is literature at its very, very best - her talent shimmers off every single page, her prose is exquisite and her observations about the complexities and competitiveness of intimate relationships, the chaos of the human condition and the inexorable tension between love, family, creativity and art-making are second to none. This novel is an absolute triumph in every respect
The dread that slowly creeps into your bones while reading The Anniversary is difficult to shake off, yet you cannot look away. I revelled in every bit of this astute, compelling, psychological novel.
As clever as it is delicious. A masterclass in layered sophistication . . . The Anniversary is a fully-realised literary achievement. From its sensuous sentences to its thrilling genre-craft to its timely cultural provocations. It is a book that could be read under a beach umbrella or in a university classroom
Electrifying
Stephanie Bishop's novel The Anniversary is seductive, mysterious, and fiercely intelligent. Bishop peels back, with great insight and artistry, layer after layer of her character's psyche, laying bare the singular pleasures and secret resentments at the centre of any marriage, any life. This is a book to be savoured for its elegant sentences and psychological depth, but you'll be hard-pressed not to devour it in a few voracious sittings.
I absolutely loved The Anniversary, a literary thriller that is simultaneously addictive, compelling, and deeply clever
The Anniversary is a disquieting, stunning book about marriage, art, power and creativity.
I absolutely loved THE ANNIVERSARY, with its very rare combination of elegance and tension. The dark yet subtle sense of foreboding draws you into the story so cleverly. Magnificent writing that is utterly compelling
Exquisite, profound, and utterly exhilarating: The Anniversary is a stunning achievement.
Absolutely addictive. When reading The Anniversary, I found myself forgetting who I am or where I was. Only art that exudes brilliance can conjure this state
Tense, elegant, sensuous.
It is intelligent and literary in the best sense of the word: fluent in style, self-aware in its deployment of genre... in the metaphysical reach of this book, the writer I kept thinking of was Iris Murdoch
In The Anniversary Stephanie Bishop expertly and mercilessly builds an atmosphere of intense uncertainty and threat. You won't want to put it down.
The Anniversary is a haunting mystery, sophisticated, subtle and subversive. Bishop considers the discipline, scrupulous and otherwise, required to make a marriage, as well as to make art, capturing the longing and the disappointment inherent in the attempt to make one's self known to others.
Compelling and dark, a psychological thriller that makes you want to peel back the pages . . . The Anniversary lives up to the hype. For fans of Rachel Cusk and Siri Hustvedt
Such a stylish, incisive novel, tight with suspense and powerful insight. I loved it and will be recommending it far and wide
Nothing in this exquisitely twisted tale is quite what it seems. But though the cool, sharp, disenchanted narrator is not to be trusted, one thing about her is for real - her ability to say things so witty and so pungently true I kept turning down pages to mark them. If I kept a commonplace book I would have filled it with lines from this compelling novel about creativity and its discontents
Very addictive and so smart - a fever dream about a writer getting everything they want and living out all their nightmares at the same time
With a unique style and descriptions so real you can feel the salt-spray drift from the page, The Anniversary draws you in. Addictive and dynamic.