The most thrilling work yet from the best-selling prize-winning author of The Newlyweds and
Lost and Wanted a stunning new novel set in French Polynesia and New York City about three
characters who undergo massive transformations over the course of a single yearA big-hearted
tightly-plotted novel that bravely takes on our times by looking at the timeless stuff of human
intimacy. The Limits is an immersive and powerful book.” –Rumaan Alam author of Leave the
World Behind From Mo’orea a tiny volcanic island off the coast of Tahiti a French biologist
obsessed with saving Polynesia’s imperiled coral reefs sends her teenage daughter to live with
her ex-husband in New York. By the time fifteen-year-old Pia arrives at her father Stephen’s
luxury apartment in Manhattan and meets his new younger wife Kate she has been shuttled
between her parents’ disparate lives—her father’s consuming work as a surgeon at an overwhelmed
New York hospital her mother’s relentless drive against a ticking ecological clock—for most of
her life. Fluent in French intellectually precocious moving between cultures with seeming
ease Pia arrives in New York poised for a rebellion just as COVID sends her and her
stepmother together into near total isolation. A New York City schoolteacher Kate struggles to
connect with a teenager whose capacity for destruction seems exceeded only by her privilege.
Even as Kate fails to parent Pia—and questions her own ability to become a mother—one of her
sixteen-year-old students is already caring for a toddler full time. Athyna’s love for her
nephew Marcus is a burden that becomes heavier as she struggles to finish her senior year
online. Juggling her manifold responsibilities Athyna finds herself more and more anxious
every time she leaves the house. Just as her fear of what is waiting for her outside her Staten
Island community feels insupportable an incident at home makes her desperate to leave. When
their lives collide Pia and Athyna spiral toward parallel but inescapably different tragedies.
Moving from a South Pacific paradise ” where rage still simmers against the colonial government
and its devastating nuclear tests to the extreme inequalities of twenty-first century New York
City The Limits is an unforgettably moving novel about nation race class and family.
Heart-wrenching and humane a profound work from one of America’s most prodigiously gifted
novelists.
