February

A moving and masterful novel from an extraordinary writer comparable to Carol Shields and Mary Lawson, longlisted for the Booker Prize 2010.

Lisa Moore's work is passionate, gritty, lucid and beautiful. She has a great gift

Moore's wonderful fluidity of approach is noticeable right down to the level of her individual sentences. It has been a joy indeed to discover Lisa Moore

An astonishing writer. She brings to her pages what we are always seeking in fiction and only find in the best of it: a magnetizing gift for revealing how the earth feels, looks, tastes, smells, and an unswerving instinct for what's important in life

Heart-warming...domestic fiction at its finest... Moore depicts her characters with compassion and respect... Despite the chill of its title, February exudes the warmth and joyousness of a much sunnier world

Moore slips [small insights] in so gently you barely feel them, turning a sad story simply told into a minor-key triumph

[An] extraordinary, unusually philosophical and human novel... Moore's prose is precise, never laboured and always, and this is the crucial point, convincing

Skilfully structured...delicate, involving novel

Moore deftly weaves together the present...and the past, evoking memory and grief in pitch-perfect detail

Lisa Moore's style is cool, clear, lethally accurate and reminiscent of Raymond Carver

Lisa Moore offers a devastating study of loneliness that is moving but never sentimental

A well-crafted and shrewd meditation on motherhood and loss.

A tragedy at sea, a miracle on paper... Moore offers us, elegantly, exultantly, the very consciousness of her characters. In this way, she does more than make us feel for them. She makes us feel what they feel, which is the point of literature and maybe even the point of being human.

This mesmerising book is full of tears, and is a graceful meditation on how to survive life's losses

Fans of Anita Shreve and Anne Enright will love this

The gentle, meandering pace of this exquisitely expresses the agony of grief and the confusions and complexities of parental love

Moore's portrayal of loss is remarkably real

Profoundly moving, beautifully written book

A perfectly pitched novel that captures its characters and their dilemmas.

Lisa Moore is the acclaimed author of Alligator, winner of the Commonwealth Prize for Canada and the Caribbean, a finalist for the Giller Prize and longlisted for the Orange Prize. Her story collection Open was also a finalist for the Giller. Both books were bestsellers in Canada. Lisa Moore lives with her husband and two children in St John's, Newfoundland.

In 1982, the oil rig Ocean Ranger sinks off the coast of Newfoundland during a Valentine's night storm. Helen O'Mara, pregnant with her fourth child, receives a call telling her that her husband, Cal, has drowned. 
 
A quarter of a century later, Helen is woken by another phone call. It is her wayward son, John, calling from another time zone to tell her that he has made a girl pregnant and he wants Helen to decide what to do. As John grapples with what it might mean to be a father, Helen realises that she must shake off her decades of mourning in order to help. 
 
With grace and precision and an astonishing ability to render the precise details of her characters' physical and emotional worlds, Lisa Moore reveals the story that unfurls around those two moments.

Lisa Moore

Lisa Moore's work is passionate, gritty, lucid and beautiful

Fresh out of jail, Slaney sees the world with pin-bright clarity. As the plot tightens like a pair of pincers, Lisa Moore's prose is worth lingering over

Moore vividly captures Slaney's youthful hopes and fears... A mesmerising narrative

In the creation of David Slaney, Lisa Moore brings us an unforgettable character, embodying the exuberance and energy of misspent youth

Patrick DeWitt, author of The Sisters Brothers

Precise, compressed, intimately rhythmic, mesmerizingly smart

[Moore’s] pedigree is apparent on every page

Caught is an elaborate cat and mouse chase, written with a haughty bite. With ever growing command and intensity, Moore’s omniscient prose slowly reveals an intricate trap which surrounds her protagonist. Her investment in characters’ verisimilitude makes it hard not to root for the bad guy... Moore’s narrative landscape is rich in imagery and personality, contributing to the lasting impression of her latest novel.

Caught is a literary adventure story, which is to say it is both action-packed while being an investigation into character and motive. An outstanding novel, combining the complexity of the best literary fiction with the page-turning compulsive readability of a thriller.

As trippy, mellow, and revelatory as Hearn’s weed, Caught takes pleasure from rewriting crime formulas and gives pleasure in doing so.

This is an author who grips you with her impeccable use of language. The novel walks a great line between paperback levity and psychological intelligence.

It is a page-turner that also displays great psychological insight

Caught is not just a good old-fashioned adventure story, but also has the epic, tragic weight of Homer’s Odyssey

Slaney lay there, flat on his back, chest hammering, looking at the stars. It was as far as he had been from the Springfield penitentiary since the doors of that institution admitted him four years before. It was not far enough. He heaved himself off the ground and started running. 
 
It’s June 1978 and David Slaney can be sure of only one thing. He can’t get caught. Not this time. He’s escaped from prison, needs to make good on the drug heist that went wrong, win back the woman he loves and buy himself a new life. First, though, he must travel across a vast country of watchful eyes, booby traps and friends who could be foes – he can’t trust anyone, it turns out. And then on to Columbia, where the real test begins. 
 
With bravado and the exuberant folly of youth, Slaney embarks on a road trip that will take him from the seedy motels of Nova Scotia to a beach party in Columbia, navigating bad weather and a ferocious storm at sea, undercover cops and gun-toting drug barons. In elegant, forensic prose and a fierce, dry humour, Lisa Moore tightens the net around Slaney in a suspenseful and compulsive adventure story.

Lisa Moore

Praise for Caught

Lisa Moore's work is passionate, gritty, lucid and beautiful

Fresh out of jail, Slaney sees the world with pin-bright clarity. As the plot tightens like a pair of pincers, Lisa Moore's prose is worth lingering over

Moore vividly captures Slaney's youthful hopes and fears... A mesmerising narrative

Lisa Moore's work is passionate, gritty, lucid and beautiful

Fresh out of jail, Slaney sees the world with pin-bright clarity. As the plot tightens like a pair of pincers, Lisa Moore's prose is worth lingering over

Moore vividly captures Slaney's youthful hopes and fears... A mesmerising narrative

Lisa Moore's work is passionate, gritty, lucid and beautiful

Fresh out of jail, Slaney sees the world with pin-bright clarity. As the plot tightens like a pair of pincers, Lisa Moore's prose is worth lingering over

Moore vividly captures Slaney's youthful hopes and fears... A mesmerising narrative

Books by Lisa Moore

Follow penguin

Follow ladybird

Follow puffin

Sign up to the Penguin newsletter