Emil Wilson

Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time

‘A beautiful, honest book about friendship and family’

‘The Nightingales is a book filled with heart and warmth and colour. Though there is loss and grief at its core, it sings about freedom and the vivid urgency of life. Inspiring and full of hope, it’s a book whose soul stays with you long after you’ve turned the last page’

'The Nightingales is as brilliant as it is beautiful, a study in family and kindness, of doing the right thing, of not the doing the right thing, of surviving a home fraught with dysfunction. Emil Wilson shows us that under duress some people can show immense kindness and warmth while others just falter and wither. The Nightingales is a serious gem'

Willy Vlautin, author of The Left and the Lucky

A coming-of-age story for the ages. All ages. For anyone who has lived through loss (and who hasn’t?), The Nightingales is a blessing sung after the tears have slowed down. This book is a triumph.

The Nightingales is a book awash with tenderness, with the audacity and courage to make a room for kindness, with art that performs on each and every page the beautiful and most humane acts of remembering — particular, impressionistic, incomplete, eidetic, afire with humor and compassion. Here is an extraordinary achievement that takes history and offers it to the future as the most forgiving gift.

Mark Z. Danielewski, author of House of Leaves

Gorgeously illustrated and emotionally piercing, this coming-of-age story set at the height of the AIDs epidemic shows how impactful one friendship can be on the direction of a life. Nuanced, empathetic, and impossible to set down. Highly recommended!

Maia Kobabe, author of Gender Queer: A Memoir

Told with the utmost care, Emil Wilson’s The Nightingales is exactly the kind of scathing, compassionate, and tragic family portrait that I love the most. I’ve urgently and insistently recommended this to every friend and loved one, so that I might have some company in laughing and crying and savouring this beautifully drawn story.

Based on a true story, the singular tale of a seventeen-year-old girl and the dying stranger who moves into her family’s home 
 
It’s spring 1985 when Emil Wilson’s father, Donald, quietly invites his colleague Jim to move in with his family. What Don doesn’t tell his wife Annemarie or his teenage daughter Lou is that Jim has AIDS. 
 
For small-town Oregon in the eighties, a place where Lou’s treasured New York Times arrives three days late, AIDS is still a news story that happens in faraway places to faraway people. Jim is worldly, witty and quickly deteriorating. His presence in the house turns the family upside down. 
 
As Annemarie’s fear and resentment grow, adding further strain to the family’s shaky foundations, Lou forms an unlikely friendship with Jim (and his two showbiz Pomeranians, Henny and Penny) – a friendship that pushes Lou to grow up, get out and imagine a life beyond the limits of her town. 
 
Tender, funny and gorgeously illustrated in full colour, The Nightingales is an unforgettable portrait of an imperfect family, and a coming of age shaped by love and loss.

Emil Wilson

Praise for The Nightingales

'Tender and humane, I loved this book'

‘A beautiful, honest book about friendship and family’

‘The Nightingales is a book filled with heart and warmth and colour. Though there is loss and grief at its core, it sings about freedom and the vivid urgency of life. Inspiring and full of hope, it’s a book w ...

'Tender and humane, I loved this book'

‘A beautiful, honest book about friendship and family’

‘The Nightingales is a book filled with heart and warmth and colour. Though there is loss and grief at its core, it sings about freedom and the vivid urgency of life. Inspiring and full of hope, it’s a book w ...

'Tender and humane, I loved this book'

‘A beautiful, honest book about friendship and family’

‘The Nightingales is a book filled with heart and warmth and colour. Though there is loss and grief at its core, it sings about freedom and the vivid urgency of life. Inspiring and full of hope, it’s a book w ...

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