FROM THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF HUNGRY GHOSTS

A haunting novel about a woman who attempts to rebuild her world through an obsessive, unlikely act: completing the brutally difficult video game her teenage son left unfinished

Lenore hasn’t left the house in months. She lives in darkness, ignoring calls, surviving on delivered groceries and sending her sister proof of life updates in the form of a daily Wordle score. Numb and suspended, she has become estranged from others and from herself.

Then, her online therapist prescribes her the task of writing a letter every day for thirty days. It’s through this act that Lenore begins to excavate her past – who she was, who she became and what grief has made of her. Slowly, a purpose emerges: she will attempt to finish the brutally difficult videogame her teenage son left behind. She can’t explain why, only that completing it feels like a way back to meaning and, perhaps eventually, to the living.

Lyrical, devastating and fiercely original, Second Lives is a story of survival in the aftermath of unthinkable loss, and an ode to the enduring human capacity for connection.