Amphibian
Published on 8. August 2024
Book
Hardback
320 pages
978-0-349-01792-1 (ISBN)
Description
'Has a queasily compelling power' The Times
'Haunting and visceral as a fairytale' Lilly Dancyger
'Brims with sex and violence and threat, and moves to a crescendo of strange and magical beauty' Rebecca Stott
'Gorgeously written ...resurrected for me the exquisite and ecstatic pains of girlhood' Hannah Lillith Assadi, author of Sonora and The Stars Are Not Yet Bells
'Exhilirating' Allison Behringer
Sissy is used to being on the outside. The new girl in her West Country school, she recently arrived with her troubled mother, prone to letting Sissy fend for herself.
But from the day Sissy fights a boy in front of Tegan, she's no longer alone. Bonded by violence, they grow so close they feel like one being: wrapped around each other in bed at sleepovers, sending photographs to men they meet online, and scaring each other with reports of the girls being snatched at night in their town.
Over the course of the school year, they find themselves on the threshold of girlhood, with threats gathering thick and fast around them. And as their make-believe worlds bleed into their daily lives, Sissy feels herself transforming into something strange and terrifying.
Amphibian is a tender, haunting coming-of-age debut about desire, precocity and the intensity of early friendships that have the power to upend our lives.
'Haunting and visceral as a fairytale' Lilly Dancyger
'Brims with sex and violence and threat, and moves to a crescendo of strange and magical beauty' Rebecca Stott
'Gorgeously written ...resurrected for me the exquisite and ecstatic pains of girlhood' Hannah Lillith Assadi, author of Sonora and The Stars Are Not Yet Bells
'Exhilirating' Allison Behringer
Sissy is used to being on the outside. The new girl in her West Country school, she recently arrived with her troubled mother, prone to letting Sissy fend for herself.
But from the day Sissy fights a boy in front of Tegan, she's no longer alone. Bonded by violence, they grow so close they feel like one being: wrapped around each other in bed at sleepovers, sending photographs to men they meet online, and scaring each other with reports of the girls being snatched at night in their town.
Over the course of the school year, they find themselves on the threshold of girlhood, with threats gathering thick and fast around them. And as their make-believe worlds bleed into their daily lives, Sissy feels herself transforming into something strange and terrifying.
Amphibian is a tender, haunting coming-of-age debut about desire, precocity and the intensity of early friendships that have the power to upend our lives.
Reviews / Votes
'Has a queasily compelling power . . . Wetherall's prose is thick with the terror and wonder of those turbulent years of physical change, and comes laced with mythic, mystic resonances-and a rather disconcerting dollop of magic realism.' * The Times * Surreal and magical . . . haunting . . . mesmerising. * Heat * 'In her debut novel, Tyler Wetherall mines the strange depths of female friendship for all of its traumatic treasure. Rarely have I felt so viscerally transported back in time as I did while reading this beautiful and haunting book. Gorgeously written and magically dressed, Amphibian resurrected for me the exquisite and ecstatic pains of girlhood.' * Hannah Lillith Assadi, author of Sonora and The Stars Are Not Yet Bells * 'I absolutely love this book. Haunting and visceral as a fairytale, Amphibian captures girlhood in all its feral, mythic glory and horror. Sissy and Tegan have a place in my heart forever.' * Lilly Dancyger, author of First Love and Negative Space, and editor of Burn It Down * 'It was something special to exist in the world of this book. Amphibian captures the contradictions of adolescence: the fear of and ache for change, the repulsive and joyful explorations of one's body, the need for protection and the urge to break free. In this exhilarating and visceral story, the final years of make-believe collide with the early years of real world consequences. In Wetherall's insistence on peering into all the dark corners of adolescence, she is able to do something quite profound: to rightfully dignify the experience of girlhood. I will be thinking about these characters and this story for a long time.' * Allison Behringer, award-winning narrative audio journalist and creator of Bodies podcast * This heart-wrenching coming-of-age novel had me constantly near-tears. I couldn't put it down and feel haunted by every moment, every sentence. * Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year * Gripping . . . A coolly observed portrait of the intense period when influence by peers easily trumps parental control * Financial Times * 'Tyler Wetherall is a fine writer and a great storyteller. Her debut novel is unlike anything else I have read. As a tale of childhood friendship, it brims with sex and violence and threat, and moves to a crescendo of strange and magical beauty. I recognised the strangeness of my own girlhood in it, and I am sure that other readers will do the same. Amphibian will stay with me for a long time. Tyler's art is to weave together a weight of observatory realist detail with the surreal - what Elizabeth Bishop called the 'surreality of the everyday'. The result here is terrific.' * Rebecca Stott, Costa Award winning author of In the Days of Rain *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Little, Brown Book Group
Product notice
Trade binding
Illustrations
NA
Dimensions
Height: 223 mm
Width: 147 mm
Thickness: 34 mm
Weight
428 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-349-01792-1 (9780349017921)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Tyler Wetherall is an author, journalist, screenwriter and teacher who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her first book, the memoir No Way Home, about a childhood spent on the run with her fugitive father, was hailed as "Lucid, tender, exquisitely re-imagined and compulsively readable"; "wondrous and richly detailed" ; "a luminous memoir that nobody who reads it will soon forget". Her short fiction has appeared in the Gettysburg Review and Brooklyn Vol. 1, and she has written for Modern Love, the Guardian, Vice and Conde Nast Traveler.