THE LIGHTNESS

Emily Temple

Praise for The Lightness:

‘Funny, whip-smart and transcendently wise about friendship, family, lust and love’

Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation and Weather

‘With dark, stylish prose and a group of teenage girls up to no good, The Lightness could be the love child of Donna Tartt and Tana French, but its savage, glittering magic is all Emily Temple’s own’

Chloe Benjamin, author of The Immortalists

‘A darkly funny, luminously drawn mystery that hits bullseye after bullseye of language and emotion. The Lightness is a book I didn’t know I needed and now can’t stop thinking about: swift, surprising and utterly captivating’

Téa Obreht, author of Inland and The Tiger’s Wife

‘Emily Temple’s sentences are extraordinary: musical, bristling with animal intelligence, feline in their tensed sinuosity, their lack of the usual loyalties, their readiness to pounce. This remarkable novel is made up of equal parts desire and dread; it constantly surprised me, eerily outpacing my expectations. The Lightness is a glorious debut’

Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You

‘Emily Temple’s debut The Lightness grants us a bold, smart, hilarious new voice. She tells a page-turning story that’s also a detective story – psychologically wise and totally wise-assed, all while being both cynical and spiritual. A classic must read!’

Mary Karr, author of Lit

Dedication

FOR MY PARENTS

i

Once, not so long ago, a woman on the street told me my fortune. She said it was good news: I’d live a long life. I’d be happy. Bouncing babies, etc. I was past thirty by then, and I’d had these things on my mind. But there was a catch (well, isn’t there always?): You’ll never get your good, long life if you keep asking the wrong questions, the woman said. I wanted to know: Which question is the right question? She passed my fingers between her palms, my palms between her fingers. She said, Not that one. But I was only teasing her. I knew which question to ask.

ii

A suicide, they said. Nothing to suggest otherwise. If not a suicide, perhaps an accident. The steep cliff, the shifting rocks. When you see hoofprints in the forest, the authorities said. What would horses be doing in our forest, we wanted to know. Accidents happen all the time, the authorities said. We know you had nothing to do with this.

iii

I’ve found the authorities to be, in some matters, unreliable.

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