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February
February
Nov 27, 2025 6:30 PM

Author:Lisa Moore

February

In 1982, the oil rig Ocean Ranger sinks off the coast of Newfoundland during a Valentine's night storm. Helen O'Mara, pregnant with her fourth child, receives a call telling her that her husband, Cal, has drowned.

A quarter of a century later, Helen is woken by another phone call. It is her wayward son, John, calling from another time zone to tell her that he has made a girl pregnant and he wants Helen to decide what to do. As John grapples with what it might mean to be a father, Helen realises that she must shake off her decades of mourning in order to help.

With grace and precision and an astonishing ability to render the precise details of her characters' physical and emotional worlds, Lisa Moore reveals the story that unfurls around those two moments.

Reviews

Lisa Moore's work is passionate, gritty, lucid and beautiful. She has a great gift

—— Anne Enright

Moore's wonderful fluidity of approach is noticeable right down to the level of her individual sentences. It has been a joy indeed to discover Lisa Moore

—— Daily Telegraph

An astonishing writer. She brings to her pages what we are always seeking in fiction and only find in the best of it: a magnetizing gift for revealing how the earth feels, looks, tastes, smells, and an unswerving instinct for what's important in life

—— Richard Ford

Heart-warming...domestic fiction at its finest... Moore depicts her characters with compassion and respect... Despite the chill of its title, February exudes the warmth and joyousness of a much sunnier world

—— Michael Arditti , Daily Mail

Moore slips [small insights] in so gently you barely feel them, turning a sad story simply told into a minor-key triumph

—— Guardian

Assured, supple, graceful prose

—— Boyd Tonkin , Independent

[An] extraordinary, unusually philosophical and human novel... Moore's prose is precise, never laboured and always, and this is the crucial point, convincing

—— Eileen Battersby , Irish Times

Skilfully structured...delicate, involving novel

—— Daily Express

Moore deftly weaves together the present...and the past, evoking memory and grief in pitch-perfect detail

—— New Yorker

A very moving study of memory and grief

—— Adrian Turpin , Financial Times

Lisa Moore's style is cool, clear, lethally accurate and reminiscent of Raymond Carver

—— Brandon Robshaw , Independent on Sunday

Lisa Moore offers a devastating study of loneliness that is moving but never sentimental

—— Irish Times

A well-crafted and shrewd meditation on motherhood and loss.

—— Emma Hagestadt , Independent

A tragedy at sea, a miracle on paper... Moore offers us, elegantly, exultantly, the very consciousness of her characters. In this way, she does more than make us feel for them. She makes us feel what they feel, which is the point of literature and maybe even the point of being human.

—— Globe and Mail

This mesmerising book is full of tears, and is a graceful meditation on how to survive life's losses

—— Marie Claire

Fans of Anita Shreve and Anne Enright will love this

—— Viv Groskop , Red Magazine

The gentle, meandering pace of this exquisitely expresses the agony of grief and the confusions and complexities of parental love

—— Easy Living

Moore's portrayal of loss is remarkably real

—— Clare Longrigg , Psychologies

Profoundly moving, beautifully written book

—— Waterstone's Books Quarterly

A marvellous book

—— Winnipeg Free Press

A perfectly pitched novel that captures its characters and their dilemmas.

—— Woman and Home

Lose yourself in a fantastical gastronomical journey ... This novel explores familial love in an unexpected way, and you'll be hooked from the first taste

—— She

This emotional and moving tale blew us away with its beauty

—— Bella

It's as beautiful as it is strange. Bender writes such lyrical sentences, you pause over them in wonder. She has an unusual take on life; and makes even the ordinary extraordinary. It's a compulsive page turner. This book is already a best seller in America, and has been embraced by book clubs. I loved it. It's one of those books you don't want to finish - and even when you have - it stays in your mind. Bender has written three previous novels. I intend to savour them all

—— Irish Examiner

This novel, in the style of stories like Chocolat, is a dreamy feast of gorgeous writing ... Gently, beautiful, odd, this is a story to sip and savour

—— Dublin Evening Herald

An intriguing premise for an original novel about a family and its relationships

—— Good Book Guide

Moving and highly original, this book will make you look at food in a whole new light

—— Star
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