Heartbreaker. Claudia Dey
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The Borough Press
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Copyright © Claudia Dey 2018
Cover design by Holly Macdonald © HarperCollinsPublishers 2018
Cover images © Peter Ptschelinzew/Getty Images (desert background), © Rachel Willey (car)
Claudia Dey asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books
Source ISBN: 9780008295073
Ebook Edition © October 2017 ISBN: 9780008295097
Version: 2019-11-27
‘A dark star of a book, glittering with mordant humour and astonishing, seductive strangeness and grace. I am a giant fan of Claudia Dey’s wild brain’
Lauren Groff, author of Fates and Furies
‘An incandescent flare of a novel – acrobatic, devastating, and wickedly funny. It is effortlessly sly and fresh in its language, and I loved it’
Sophie Mackintosh, author of The Water Cure
‘A whole-cloth, word-for-word triumph of imagination’
Publishers Weekly
‘Disturbed, seductive, and thrilling’
i-D
‘I read My Absolute Darling and discovered a transcendent teenage narrator in the form of Turtle Alveston. Pony Darlene Fontaine is a match for Turtle – an ordinary teenage girl in a wholly extraordinary world. Her voice will echo in your head for months – even years – to come’
Sam Baker
‘A curious, memorable novel in vital prose that catapults the reader into a strange and compelling land’
Irish Times
‘Heartbreaker totally bewitched me. I love its outlandishness – its sizzling energy – the bright, fierce music in every sentence’
Leni Zumas, author of Red Clocks
‘A fierce exploration of memory and zeitgeist … Heartbreaker is a darkly comedic weirdo of a book that pulls the string of nostalgia from one side while unravelling it from the other’
The Paris Review
‘This book gave me chills all the way through. It is deeply original – in its wildness, its structure, its wisdom, and its world … I floated in the perfection of its ending. I loved this novel’s shining sensitivity. I loved its every page’
Sheila Heti, author of Motherhood
‘Behold the virtuosity of Heartbreaker! Claudia Dey has a perfect ear and the sharpest eye … devastating, unsparing and unforgettable’
Miriam Toews, author of All My Puny Sorrows
‘What begins as a simple mystery – a daughter attempting to investigate the sudden disappearance of her mother – turns into a much stranger and more engrossing tale … Dey’s rich prose drives the story with poetic acuteness’
LA Weekly
‘This book is beautiful, a perfect balancing act of dark and light. It broke my heart and then put it back together again’
Claire Cameron, author of The Bear
‘Heartbreaker makes high and hilarious art from the emotional pop-rocks and glittery junk of a certain way of being young. And vulnerable … A thrillingly fun and original novel’
Rivka Galchen author of Little Labours
‘Claudia Dey renders 1985 in perfectly crimped, shoulder-padded detail … Come for the Shyamalanian premise. Stay for the hard-rock soundtrack’
Chicago Tribune
‘Heartbreaker plays out as a vivid, tender, complex magic. A totally compulsive, singular and wild read. The people in this book are so alive, and the book itself feels unthinkably new’
Leslie Feist
‘What begins as a simple mystery – a daughter attempting to investigate the sudden disappearance of her mother – turns into a much stranger and more engrossing tale … Dey’s rich prose drives the story with poetic acuteness’
LA Weekly
‘It’s as if poet Anne Carson and satirist Mordecai Richler accidentally collided at a drunken PEN fundraiser to produce a mischievous, magical and observant girl-child’
Toronto Star
‘Devoted, as I am, to the oddities of northern, remote lands, I could not put this book down. In turns, hilarious and harrowing, Heartbreaker’s icy exactitude is direct, disturbed and entirely splendid’
Samantha Hunt, author of The Dark Dark
‘Stunning … Claudia Dey’s beautiful, off-kilter music has been missing from our literary landscape for too long – a most welcome return’
Michael Redhill, author of Giller Prize-winning Bellevue Square
‘What a completely thrilling novel! In its story, people, vision, sentences and fervor – in its pure intelligence and unbridled bravery – it stands apart … You are forever changed’
Barbara Gowdy, author of The White Bone
‘This is a book like no other. It’s eerie, it’s cult-y, it’s so very exciting, and I never wanted it to end’
Buzzfeed, Best Books of Fall 2018
In love there is no because.
ALICE NOTLEY,
IN