Ruth & Pen

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

The brilliant debut novel from Emilie Pine, author of the international bestseller NOTES TO SELF


Dublin, 7 October 2019

One day, one city, two women: Ruth and Pen. Neither known to the other, but both asking themselves the same questions: how to be with others and how, when the world doesn't seem willing to make space for them, to be with themselves?

Ruth's marriage to Aidan is in crisis. Today she needs to make a choice - to stay or not to stay, to take the risk of reaching out, or to pull up the drawbridge.

For teenage Pen, today is the day the words will flow, and she will speak her truth to Alice, to ask for what she so desperately wants.

Deeply involving, poignant and radiantly intelligent, it is a portrait of the limits of grief and love, of how we navigate our inner and outer landscapes, and the tender courage demanded by the simple, daily quest of living.

© Emilie Pine 2022 (P) Penguin Audio 2022

Critics Review

  • Mesmerising . . . I became completely immersed in this emotional, intimate read

    Good Housekeeping
  • [An] uplifting debut novel . . . joy is a vital ingredient in Ruth & Pen

    The Observer
  • The debut novel from the author of the personal essay collection Notes to Self is a poignant, raw exploration of the courage needed to find your space in the world

    i
  • Impressive . . . Pine explores with great acuity and tenderness the restorative, capacious nature of love. A wise and lovely book

    Daily Mail
  • Pine makes her chapters playful, writing with a friendly curiousness that brings to mind Ali Smith . . . Pine’s measured yet tender juxtaposition of the women’s days doesn’t draw overly neat parallels so much as prove that one needs the other – younger needs older, optimist needs pessimist, introvert needs extrovert. And our opposites might help us find clarity

    i
  • [Ruth & Pen] finds heartbreaking beauty in our everyday lives . . . There is a real tenderness in the way in which Pine writes about the teenage girls in the novel

    The Irish Times

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