February [Paperback]

"Fans of Anita Shreve and Anne Enright will love this" --Red Magazine

`The gentle, meandering pace of this exquisitely expresses the agony of grief and the confusions and complexities of parental love' --Easy Living

"Moore's portrayal of loss is remarkably real" --Psychologies

`profoundly moving, beautifully written book' --Waterstone's Books Quarterly

`A perfectly pitched novel that captures its characters and their dilemmas.'
--Woman and Home

"Moore's ability to write originally and passionately about love and death... never without the necessary bite that makes it real"
--Scottish Herald

'this mesmerising book is full of tears, and is a graceful meditation on how to survive life's losses' --Marie Claire

'Lisa Moore's heart-warming second novel is domestic fiction at its finest' --Daily Mail

'[an] extraordinary, unusually philosophical and human novel' --Irish Times

"Skilfully structured...delicate, involving novel" --The Daily Express

`Moore deftly weaves together the present... and the past, evoking memory and grief in pitch-perfect detail'. --New Yorker

`a very moving study of memory and grief' -- Financial Times

the world is so carefully observed it becomes something other than what it is. --The Observer

From the publishers of Mary Lawson and Alice Munro, a moving and masterful novel by 'an astonishing writer' (Richard Ford)

In 1982, the oil rig Ocean Ranger sank off the coast of Newfoundland during a Valentine's night storm. In the early hours of the next morning, all 84 men aboard died.

Helen O'Mara is one of those left behind when her husband, Cal, drowns. Her story starts years after the Ranger disaster, but she is compelled to travel back to the 'February' that persists in her mind, and to that moment in 1982 when, expecting a fourth child, she received the call informing her that Cal was lost at sea.

A quarter of a century on, late one winter's night, Helen is woken by another phone call. It is her wayward son John, in another time zone, on his way home. He has made a girl pregnant and he wants Helen to decide what he should do. As John grapples with what it might mean to be a father, Helen realises that she must shake off her decades of mourning in order to help.

With grace and precision, and a shocking ability to render the precise details of her characters' physical and emotional worlds, Lisa Moore reveals the whole story to us. And just as, finally, we watch the oil rig go down, we see Helen emerging from her grief to greet a new life.

In 1982, the oil rig Ocean Ranger sank off the coast of Newfoundland during a Valentine's night storm. In the early hours of the next morning, all 84 men aboard died. Lisa Moore places this terrifying historical event at the heart of her novel about grief and its devastating effect on a community.

Helen O'Mara is one of those left behind when her husband, Cal, drowns. Her story starts years after the Ranger disaster, but she is compelled to travel back to the the 'February' that persists in her mind, and to that moment in 1982 when, expecting a fourth child, she received the call informing her that Cal was lost at sea.

Quarter of a century on, late one winter's night, Helen is woken by another significant phone call. It is her wayward son John, in another time zone, on his way home. He has mistakenly made a girl pregnant and he wants Helen to decide what he should do. As John grapples with what it might mean to be a father, Helen realises that she must shake off her decades of mourning in order to help.

With grace and precision, and a shocking ability to render the precise details of her characters' physical and emotional worlds, Lisa Moore reveals the whole story to us. And just as, finally, we watch the oil rig go down, we see Helen emerging from her grief to greet her grandchild.

This affecting new novel by one of Canada's best living writers is a profound and gorgeous work from an author at the height of her powers.

'Lisa Moore's work is passionate, gritty, lucid and beautiful. She has a great gift.' Anne Enright

'An astonishing writer. She brings to her pages what we are always seeking in fiction and only find in the best of it: a magnetizing gift for revealing how the earth feels, looks, tastes, smells, and an unswerving instinct for what's important in life.' Richard Ford

Lisa Moore is the acclaimed author of Alligator, winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Canada and the Caribbean, a finalist for the Giller Prize and longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her story collection Open was also a finalist for the Giller. Both books were bestsellers in Canada. Lisa Moore lives with her husband and two children in St John's, Newfoundland.