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The Anniversary
On sale
30th May 2024
Price: £9.99
‘Stunning’ i paper
‘Dangerously readable’ Observer
‘Electrifying’ Sunday Times
Novelist J.B. Blackwood is on a cruise with her husband, Patrick, to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Patrick is older than J.B., a revered film director and formerly her professor. J.B’s art has been forever overseen by him, now it may overshadow his.
For days they sail in the sun, with nothing but dark water all around them. Then a storm hits, and Patrick falls off the ship.
J.B. is left alone, as the search for what happened to Patrick – and the truth about their marriage – begins.
‘Magnificent’ Joanna Cannon
‘Compulsive’ Financial Times
‘I loved it’ Megan Hunter
‘Dangerously readable’ Observer
‘Electrifying’ Sunday Times
Novelist J.B. Blackwood is on a cruise with her husband, Patrick, to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Patrick is older than J.B., a revered film director and formerly her professor. J.B’s art has been forever overseen by him, now it may overshadow his.
For days they sail in the sun, with nothing but dark water all around them. Then a storm hits, and Patrick falls off the ship.
J.B. is left alone, as the search for what happened to Patrick – and the truth about their marriage – begins.
‘Magnificent’ Joanna Cannon
‘Compulsive’ Financial Times
‘I loved it’ Megan Hunter
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Reviews
Stephanie Bishop's novel The Anniversary is seductive, mysterious, and fiercely intelligent. Bishop peels back, with great insight and artistry, layer after layer of her character's psyche, laying bare the singular pleasures and secret resentments at the centre of any marriage, any life. This is a book to be savoured for its elegant sentences and psychological depth, but you'll be hard-pressed not to devour it in a few voracious sittings.
In The Anniversary Stephanie Bishop expertly and mercilessly builds an atmosphere of intense uncertainty and threat. You won't want to put it down.
I absolutely loved THE ANNIVERSARY, with its very rare combination of elegance and tension. The dark yet subtle sense of foreboding draws you into the story so cleverly. Magnificent writing that is utterly compelling
Very addictive and so smart - a fever dream about a writer getting everything they want and living out all their nightmares at the same time
Such a stylish, incisive novel, tight with suspense and powerful insight. I loved it and will be recommending it far and wide
Compelling and dark, a psychological thriller that makes you want to peel back the pages . . . The Anniversary lives up to the hype. For fans of Rachel Cusk and Siri Hustvedt
The Anniversary is a haunting mystery, sophisticated, subtle and subversive. Bishop considers the discipline, scrupulous and otherwise, required to make a marriage, as well as to make art, capturing the longing and the disappointment inherent in the attempt to make one's self known to others.
Stephanie Bishop's The Anniversary is literature at its very, very best - her talent shimmers off every single page, her prose is exquisite and her observations about the complexities and competitiveness of intimate relationships, the chaos of the human condition and the inexorable tension between love, family, creativity and art-making are second to none. This novel is an absolute triumph in every respect
Tense, elegant, sensuous.
Absolutely addictive. When reading The Anniversary, I found myself forgetting who I am or where I was. Only art that exudes brilliance can conjure this state
The Anniversary is a disquieting, stunning book about marriage, art, power and creativity.
'The dread that slowly creeps into your bones while reading The Anniversary is difficult to shake off, yet you cannot look away. I revelled in every bit of this astute, compelling, psychological novel.
Nothing in this exquisitely twisted tale is quite what it seems. But though the cool, sharp, disenchanted narrator is not to be trusted, one thing about her is for real - her ability to say things so witty and so pungently true I kept turning down pages to mark them. If I kept a commonplace book I would have filled it with lines from this compelling novel about creativity and its discontents
It is intelligent and literary in the best sense of the word: fluent in style, self-aware in its deployment of genre... in the metaphysical reach of this book, the writer I kept thinking of was Iris Murdoch
The sense of foreboding increases as the narrative progresses and I found it impossible to put down. It's excellent on how a partner's resentment can grow until it explodes as if from nowhere. It's also wonderful on writing itself and how our protagonists both enable and block each other's process. I adored it.
Exquisite, profound, and utterly exhilarating: The Anniversary is a stunning achievement.
As clever as it is delicious. A masterclass in layered sophistication . . . The Anniversary is a fully-realised literary achievement. From its sensuous sentences to its thrilling genre-craft to its timely cultural provocations. It is a book that could be read under a beach umbrella or in a university classroom
Exquisite, profound, and utterly exhilarating: The Anniversary is a stunning achievement.
Dangerously readable . . . If only all literary novels were this engaging and this perceptive about human nature
I absolutely loved The Anniversary, a literary thriller that is simultaneously addictive, compelling, and deeply clever
Electrifying
The dread that slowly creeps into your bones while reading The Anniversary is difficult to shake off, yet you cannot look away. I revelled in every bit of this astute, compelling, psychological novel.
In The Anniversary Stephanie Bishop expertly and mercilessly builds an atmosphere of intense uncertainty and threat. You won't want to put it down.
Tense, elegant, sensuous
The Anniversary is a compulsive yet redemptive book layered with nuances that will have those new to Bishop's work hunting out her backlist.
With a unique style and descriptions so real you can feel the salt-spray drift from the page, The Anniversary draws you in. Addictive and dynamic.
I very much enjoyed The Anniversary. It put me in mind of Gone Girl and of Fleishman Is in Trouble too. It nails so much about how ruthless a writer of fiction needs to be both in relation to life and material