Our Better Natures
On sale
4th February 2027
Price: £10.99
‘A captivating invocation of a moment of revolutionary zeal and hope [and] a prescient reminder of the importance of testimony in the fight for justice, of individual stories. Eventually, they will be heard’ Irish Examiner
‘The strength of sympathetic engagement is what the novel has always done best, [and] Ward movingly demonstrates the need to use this to keep freeing ourselves, day after day’ Guardian, ‘Book of the Day’ Guardian ‘Book of the Day’
‘Tackles big ideas with verve while remaining alert to the multiple power dynamics shaping women’s lives’ Daily Mail
‘Ward evokes the stages of womanhood with dark panache’ Melissa Katsoulis, The Times
‘Ward fleshes out her real-life characters with complete conviction, deftly threading their own words into the fabric of her fiction’ Financial Times
Amid the chaos and political upheaval of 1970s America, three women must accept the world as it is, or act to change it.
Phyllis Patterson is a housewife in White Plains, Illinois. When her son Jimmy returns home from Vietnam with a Korean wife and children, Phyllis’s small-town world is upended as she starts to see her herself through new eyes.
After a long and traumatic absence, Andrea Dworkin arrives back in America to embody a feminist revolution, no matter the personal price.
Muriel Rukeyser is a poet in New York, using her words as weapons and pushing her body to its limits. In this era of political unrest, Muriel’s life stands as a testament to the possibility of creative resistance.
A postcard from an imprisoned writer thousands of miles away will unite these women in the pursuit of a world they can be in, and believe in.
Full of compassion, imagination and rich storytelling, Our Better Natures is a remarkable novel about power, feminism and freedom.
‘The strength of sympathetic engagement is what the novel has always done best, [and] Ward movingly demonstrates the need to use this to keep freeing ourselves, day after day’ Guardian, ‘Book of the Day’ Guardian ‘Book of the Day’
‘Tackles big ideas with verve while remaining alert to the multiple power dynamics shaping women’s lives’ Daily Mail
‘Ward evokes the stages of womanhood with dark panache’ Melissa Katsoulis, The Times
‘Ward fleshes out her real-life characters with complete conviction, deftly threading their own words into the fabric of her fiction’ Financial Times
Amid the chaos and political upheaval of 1970s America, three women must accept the world as it is, or act to change it.
Phyllis Patterson is a housewife in White Plains, Illinois. When her son Jimmy returns home from Vietnam with a Korean wife and children, Phyllis’s small-town world is upended as she starts to see her herself through new eyes.
After a long and traumatic absence, Andrea Dworkin arrives back in America to embody a feminist revolution, no matter the personal price.
Muriel Rukeyser is a poet in New York, using her words as weapons and pushing her body to its limits. In this era of political unrest, Muriel’s life stands as a testament to the possibility of creative resistance.
A postcard from an imprisoned writer thousands of miles away will unite these women in the pursuit of a world they can be in, and believe in.
Full of compassion, imagination and rich storytelling, Our Better Natures is a remarkable novel about power, feminism and freedom.
Reviews
Our Better Natures is an absolute marvel - a marvel of ideas, full of intellectual delights; a marvel of construction that propels us toward the most unexpected - and inevitable - outcomes; a marvel of writing, elegant, poised, wise, achingly beautiful at times, but never pulling focus from the stories of the three women and the people around them; and a marvel of compassion. A truly magnificent creation
[Our Better Natures] tackles big ideas with verve while remaining alert to the multiple power dynamics shaping women's lives
An ambitious and earnest (in a good way) novel that demonstrates that even the most 'ordinary' of lives can, in their own small, significant way, change the world
[T]he strength of sympathetic engagement is what the novel has always done best, [and] Ward movingly demonstrates the need to use this to keep freeing ourselves, day after day
Our Better Natures is a triumph of literary empathy, an intellectual adventure connecting Korean immigrants in the US midwest to the activist Andrea Dworkin in Amsterdam to the poet Muriel Rukeyser as she protests the Vietnam war. Sophie Ward miraculously joins each living, breathing dot of this unique novel to build a convincing picture of a turbulent, formative cultural and social moment
Our Better Natures is an elixir of hard-won inspiration and risky curiosity. Set against the tumult of the 1970s, this taut novel unfolds with elegant precision and vulnerability, examining the inner lives of a poet, a small-town housewife, and an activist all navigating change and choice as their known worlds collapse. Our Better Natures is a stunning meditation on hope, its fragile insistence, driven by Sophie Ward's singular wit and astounding philosophical playfulness. It cements Ward's place as one of our most inventive, inquisitive and alert novelists working today
A captivating invocation of a moment of revolutionary zeal and hope, Our Better Natures invites us to consider what has been achieved since the 1970s - and what hasn't. It is also a prescient reminder of the importance of testimony in the fight for justice, of individual stories. Eventually, they will be heard.
'Sophie Ward's inventive novel... seamlessly integrates the real private and public lives of Andrea Dworkin and Muriel Rukeyser with the fictional world of Phyllis Patterson... Ward fleshes out her real-life characters with complete conviction, deftly threading their own words into the fabric of her fiction'
An ambitious, multivoiced account of second-wave feminism shot through with Korean flavours and celebrity cameos... Ward evokes the stages of womanhood with dark panache
Our Better Natures is potent and beguiling. It makes one see with a better eye