Etta and Otto and Russell and James

'Genuinely moving' Guardian 
'Delightful' Mail on Sunday 
'Charming, fresh, touching . . . cuts through to the heart' Sunday Times 
 
'Tell me about home, please. Tell me about the weather. About the heat or dust or still-ness. Anything. And tell me about you. I keep your photo on the side without the gun. For balance.' 
 
This is a love story that spans fifty years, three lives, two continents and an ocean. It tells of school teacher Etta, who settles in the Canadian prairies during the Great Depression and of the two pupils who fall in love with her: Russell, a city boy who takes to farming despite his twisted leg, and Otto, who struggles in school but always tries hard - even when he's sent to fight a war in a distant land. It is a story of love and joy, pain and passion, memory and forgetting - and one incredible journey. It is the story of Etta and Otto and Russell and James.

Writing that easily equals that of the Booker-winning Richard Flanagan...[and] as readable and gripping as any thriller. Only the thrills offered by this bright new star of literature are metaphysical and unexpected and will leave you thinking on a new level about the connections between men, women and places.

Beautifully written...this deserves to follow in the footsteps of 2014's big debut novels The Miniaturist and Elizabeth Is Missing.

Intriguing... a clear and beautifully unadorned prose style... Hooper has written an interesting, nuanced and genuinely moving book.

Hooper has more or less nailed the 'Amelie' charm with this sweet, disarming story of lasting love...Hooper shows great restraint in balancing the quirky with the universal, blurring the lines between them. This may be the best novel to meaningfully feature windblown dust. Hooper's steady hand creates the perfect setup for the unexpected. To paraphrase Wallace Stevens: A man and a woman are one. Two men, a woman and a coyote are one.

Luminous debut...there's a lovely musicality to her prose - care and attention have been spent on the rhythms and melody of her words...wonderfully tender.

Her debut novel is a magical, big-hearted book about one woman's walk to the sea. If Wes Anderson's stylised dream worlds make you happy, you need a copy of Etta and Otto and Russell and James.

A fan of Audrey Niffenegger and Alice Munro, Hooper's sense of playfulness comes across in the book's gentle magical realism'

charming, sweet...there is a singing simplicity that cuts through to the heart of things...fresh and touching

Beautifully written...a powerfully moving account.

Picked as one of the hot authors to watch in 2015.

A sweet, redemptive message ...Etta's trek as she comes to the end of her life and reckons with the past, has a real and worthwhile dignity to it.

There's a huge buzz around this debut novel.

Canadian Emma Hooper is sure to be 2015's face of literary quirk.

The friends' life stories unfold in beautifully written, bite-sized chapters that ebb and flow between past and present like the sea Etta is seeking. Unusual, touching and utterly memorable.

An irresistibly enchanting debut novel

Hooper, with great insight, explores the interactions and connections between spouses and friends - the rivalries, the camaraderie, the joys and tragedies - and reveals the extraordinary lengths to which people will go in the name of love.

This is a quietly powerful story whose dreamlike quality lingers long after the last page is turned.

Magical... such wonderfully assured storytelling: it's been a very long time since a book has taken me by the hand - and the heart - as this one has.

Sarah Winman (international bestselling author of When God Was a Rabbit)

Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper is incredibly moving, beautifully written and luminous with wisdom. It is a book that restores one's faith in life even as it deepens its mystery. Wonderful!

Emma Hooper is the author of Etta and Otto and Russell and James. As a musician, her solo project 'Waitress for the Bees' tours internationally and has earned her a Finnish Cultural Knighthood. She is also a research-lecturer at Bath Spa University, in the Commercial Music department, but goes home to cross-country ski in Canada as much as she can afford.

I've gone. I've never seen the water, so I've gone there. I will try to remember to come back. 
 
Etta's greatest unfulfilled wish, living in the rolling farmland of Saskatchewan, is to see the sea. And so, at the age of eighty-two she gets up very early one morning, takes a rifle, some chocolate, and her best boots, and begins walking the 2,000 miles to water. 
 
Meanwhile her husband Otto waits patiently at home, left only with his memories. Their neighbour Russell remembers too, but differently - and he still loves Etta as much as he did more than fifty years ago, before she married Otto.

Emma Hooper

A Wes Anderson-esque tale to fall for

The town is filled with magic, and so is Hooper's writing

Warm-hearted and winsomely imaginative

Our Homesick Songs tells a relevant, strong story about the impact of environmental change on rural communitiesand the way the young generation can feel responsible for and angry at what their forebears have done [...] This is a novel in love with music, magic and the idealism of childhood

Emma Hooper has used her craft and knowledge to weave together a plot mindful of narrative's oral and lyrical beginnings, integrating folk tale and song into her work . . . an almost musical rhythm and pulse not often found in fiction writing

The prose flows like the waves it recounts: back and forth seamlessly . . . it is elegant and musical

Hooper is fascinated by the emotional territory of migration and how individual lives are shaped by forces as powerful and inexorable as the sea

Emma Hooper has constructed such an authentic sense of place from such a distant shore

With stark prose, Hooper captures the desperation and difficulty of life on the edge of civilization. Heartbreaking and empathetic, Hooper's fine novel is a haunting evocation of changing times and the power of place

Lovely and lyrical. A story about storytellers told with a beguiling simplicity. Hooper's work brims with mermaids and music and memory

Magnificently arresting, fresh, gripping. A bright new star of literature ... will leave you thinking on a new level about the connections between men, women and places

The Times on 'Etta and Otto and Russell and James'

Wonderful! Incredibly moving, beautifully written and luminous with wisdom. A book that restores one's faith in life even as it deepens its mystery

A sweet, disarming story of lasting love

The New York Times on 'Etta and Otto and Russell and James'

Beautiful, eccentric, romantic, hugely satisfying

Big Issue on 'Etta and Otto and Russell and James'

Newfoundland, Canada, 1992. When all the fish vanish from the waters, and the cod industry abruptly collapses, it's not long before the people begin to disappear from the town of Big Running as well. As residents are forced to leave the island in search of work, ten-year-old Finn Connor suddenly finds himself living in a ghost town. There's no school, no friends and whole rows of houses stand abandoned. And then Finn's parents announce that they too must separate if their family is to survive. But Finn still has his sister, Cora, with whom he counts the dwindling boats on the coast at night, and Mrs Callaghan, who teaches him the strange and ancient melodies of their native Ireland. That is until his sister disappears, and Finn must find a way of calling home the family and the life he has lost.

Our Homesick Songs

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Emma Hooper

Praise for Our Homesick Songs

A Wes Anderson-esque tale to fall for

The town is filled with magic, and so is Hooper's writing

Warm-hearted and winsomely imaginative

A Wes Anderson-esque tale to fall for

The town is filled with magic, and so is Hooper's writing

Warm-hearted and winsomely imaginative

A Wes Anderson-esque tale to fall for

The town is filled with magic, and so is Hooper's writing

Warm-hearted and winsomely imaginative

Books by Emma Hooper

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