NEW YORK TIMES EDITORS CHOICE The masterly debut novel from an exquisitely astute writer (The
Boston Globe) about growing up in and out of the suffocating constraints of small-town
America.LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN JEAN STEIN BOOK AWARD Compact and beautiful . . . This novel
bordering on a novella punches above its weight. The New York Times Very Cold People reminded
me of My Brilliant Friend. The New Yorker ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker
NPR Los Angeles Times The Guardian Good Housekeeping My parents didn t belong in Waitsfield
but they moved there anyway. For Ruthie the frozen town of Waitsfield Massachusetts is all
she has ever known. Once home to the country s oldest and most illustrious families the Cabots
the Lowells: the first best people by the tail end of the twentieth century it is an
unforgiving place awash with secrets. Forged in this frigid landscape Ruthie has been dogged by
feelings of inadequacy her whole life. Hers is no picturesque New England childhood but one of
swap meets and factory seconds and powdered milk. Shame blankets her like the thick snow that
regularly buries nearly everything in Waitsfield. As she grows older Ruthie slowly learns how
the town s prim facade conceals a deeper darker history and how silence often masks a legacy
of harm from the violence that runs down the family line to the horrors endured by her high
school friends each suffering a fate worse than the last. For Ruthie Waitsfield is a place to
be survived and a girl like her would be lucky to get out alive. In her eagerly anticipated
debut novel Sarah Manguso has written with characteristic precision a masterwork on growing
up in and out of the suffocating constraints of a very old and very cold small town. At once
an ungilded portrait of girlhood at the crossroads of history and social class as well as a
vital confrontation with an all-American whiteness where the ice of emotional restraint meets
the embers of smoldering rage Very Cold People is a haunted jewel of a novel from one of our
most virtuosic literary writers.
