Ordinary Hazards

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Pub Date 1 Sep 2020 | Archive Date 17 Aug 2020

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Description

For fans of Celeste Ng comes a transfixing debut novel about how life’s small decisions can ultimately yield the most powerful consequences.
 
Everyone always wants to know why relationships fail. It’s a spiteful curiosity thing, schadenfreude, but also a self-preservation thing. People want to understand how to avoid the fall.

The answer is complicated. There isn’t one reason, one event. It has something to do with smoking cigarettes and drinking all night. It takes into account thousands of hours of labour on a small house, projects finished and unfinished. It is late-night conversations and inside jokes and making love and having a child. The answer is wrapped up, shrouded and ensconced in prioritization, ambition and work. Caring about these things is not the problem. Not caring about them is death.
 
Emma has settled into her hometown bar for the evening. It was in this very room that she met Lucas a few years back, on a blind date. Nine months ago, in unimaginable circumstances, they divorced.
 
As Emma listens to the locals’ banter, key facts about her life story begin to emerge and the past comes bearing down on her like a freight train.

A powerhouse in the business world, why has she ended up here, now a regular in the last bar on the edge of a small town? What is she running away from? And what is she willing to give up in order to recapture the love she has lost?
 
As Emma teeters on the edge of oblivion, becoming more booze-soaked by the hour, her night begins to spin out of control with shocking results.
 
‘Seen through keen eyes and full of deep feeling, Ordinary Hazards delves into the psyche of a woman grappling with grief, loss, and the burdens of inheritance. Anna Bruno vividly renders the messiness of a single human life in all its joy and heartbreak.’ —CLAIRE LOMBARDO, author of The Most Fun We Ever Had
 
‘Crisp, haunting, and intelligent. Beneath the surface of this booze-soaked, small town, dive bar novel lies a devastating story of loss, guilt, and grief. Bruno’s narrator proves a dark, funny, unflinching companion as you descend with her, step by step, towards the revelation of what has led her to the bar tonight.’ —STEPHEN MARKLEY, author of Ohio

'Quiet but emotionally engaging, this atmospheric novel has a raft of enduring characters who prompt her memories. Bruno has a gift for observation which she uses to produce a haunting examination of love, loss and grief.’ —Fanny Blake, Daily Mail
 
For fans of Celeste Ng comes a transfixing debut novel about how life’s small decisions can ultimately yield the most powerful consequences.
 
Everyone always wants to know why relationships fail...

Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9781471184857
PRICE US$20.00 (USD)
PAGES 400

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Average rating from 17 members


Featured Reviews

Thank you to netgalley for this advance review copy. (For reference I read this during Covid lockdown)

I read the book in one sitting. I loved it. When I started the book I assumed it was about one thing it turned out to be about something completely different. A woman spends the evening getting drunk in a bar. Recounting her life and the people she knows within a small town. I even enjoyed the jumping around in time and normally I don’t like that in books.
Trigger warnings for death in lots of forms and mental health.

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The narration of this tale is very clever - it is told by a woman over the course of an evening, divulging how a driven, successful Manhattan dweller has ended up alone in a ropey bar. For that device alone I am hugely impressed by this first time author.

All encompassing grief and lost love is beautifully described, the story slowly works its way up to the sad climax which we can all see coming but is still heart breaking when it arrives. There were a few moments in the latter part of the book where it felt a little laboured and I was glad of some action in the bar to keep the pace going.

A good, thoughtful read.

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