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The Unnamed
The Unnamed
Aug 10, 2025 10:10 AM

Author:Joshua Ferris

The Unnamed

Joshua Ferris's The Unnamed has been hailed as 'the first great book of the decade' (GQ).

In an America gone awry with strange weather, New York lawyer Tim Farnsworth suffers a peculiar affliction: the inability to stop walking. While his wife, Jane, struggles to keep their family together in the face of the unfathomable, Tim alone must battle to survive pitiless surroundings, encounters with hostile strangers, and the unrelenting demands of his own body. These challenges force Tim to ask life's most pressing questions, which he answers in a final return on foot across country to reunite with his wife and daughter.

Stripped of all defences, and the sense of hope that lies at the very heart of the American dream, Farnsworth is compelled to confront the terrifying reality of what it is to be a human being.

'A writer almost uniquely in tune with modern life . . . Ferris's flashes of brilliance are many' Evening Standard

'Original, affecting. An almost unbearable love story, between remissions of intense connection and the human inevitability of parting, between the haven of marriage and all that lies beyond' Observer

'A stunner, an unnerving portrait of a man stripped of civilization's defenses' New Yorker

Joshua Ferris was born in Illinois in 1974. He is the author of Then We Came to the End (2007), which was nominated for the National Book Award and longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, and the highly acclaimed The Unnamed. In 2010 he was selected for the New Yorker's prestigious '20 under 40' list. His most recent novel, To Rise Again at a Decent Hour, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2014 and the Dylan Thomas Prize 2014. He lives in New York.

Reviews

I love their delicacy, their exquisite taste, and the sense of their sustained happiness together.

—— Joan Bakewell , Observer

A compelling read, with characters you'll really take to your heart

—— Heat

Praise for Elizabeth Noble

—— -

A wonderfully well-written book, full of emotion

—— Daily Mail

Witty, affectionate and unashamedly tear-jerking

—— Red

Honest and beautifully written

—— Woman & Home

Tissues are essential. You'll ricochet between delicately watering eyes at the romance of it all and howling sobs at the unbearable tenderness

—— Heat

It would be a hard heart indeed that remained unmoved . . . the tender feelings that Noble engenders in her readers are to be cherished

—— Daily Express

So fluid, the pages turn themselves

—— Daily Mirror

Irresistible comfort read

—— Glamour

Noble is the mistress of the tearjerking message of love

—— Express

Ludo is a fascinatingly flawed narrator, and the language is alive with livid, unsettling imagery

—— Sunday Telegraph

James Scudamore again achieves something magical

—— Ben East , The Guardian

Slinkily assured... a steamlined fantasy summons up a teeming citadel where the wealthy take to their helicopters "like fat flies", leaving migrant workers to swarm below

—— Emma Hagestadt , Independent

There is so much... brilliantly at work in James Scudamore's Heliopolis that it seems arbitrary to praise one element over another

—— Megan L McCarthy , The Irish Times

Sinister, shocking and extremely powerful

—— Woman & Home

Wonderful

—— Red

Her writing is always thrilling and this is much more than simply a page-turner

—— Jane Wheatley , The Times

A successful novel, well made and written with a light touch

—— Alex Clark , The Guardian

It is beautifully written, and elegantly edited, and manages to pack in vivid characterisations built on tragic family histories... With its strong structure and interesting themes, it could be a textbook example of how to write a modern novel

—— Third Way

Satisfying death-blow to place-in-the-sun escapism

—— Boyd Tonkin , Independent Summer Reads

A compelling novel

—— Tatler

A wry family black comedy, a study in revenge, and an unlikely, if sinister, thriller...a characteristically intelligent, well constructed narrative... The prose is precise and fluent, the tone is neutral, and Tremain makes effective use of the fact that many adults remain children

—— Eileen Battersby , The Irish Times

A criss-crossing, sinuous tale of muted passion and sibling rivarly - and affection - set in the Cevennes. Its peculiar, particular atmosphere is conjured perfectly

—— Erica Wagner , The Times, Christmas round up

A haunting and perfectly poised tale of incest and antiques.

—— Frances Wilson , Daily Telegraph, Christmas round up

Creepily affecting

—— Katy Guest , Independent on Sunday, Christmas round up

Chilling and vivid

—— Charlotte Vowden , Daily Express

Surely one of the most versatile novelists writing today... The scene-setting opening is languorous and beautiful, giving full rein to Tremain's descriptive gifts... A disturbing tale and one rich in detail

—— Daily Express

Intriguing

—— James Urquhart , Financial Times

Tremain expertly heightens the tension in a cleverly fashioned and astutely observed novel that reads like a cross between Ruth Rendell and Jean de Florette

—— Simon Shaw , Mail on Sunday

Tremain's extraordinary imagination has produced a powerful, unsettling novel in which two worlds and cultures collide

—— Cath Kidson Magazine

Tremain writes about this part of France so well because she has known it since childhood, and she captures a sensuality in the landscape that is both attractive and eerie... It is an enthralling book about the catastrophic disruption honesty can bring

—— Siobhan Kane , Irish Times

The novel has all the formal structure of a medieval morality tale, along with its traditional dichotomies: rus and urbe, avarice and asceticism, chastity and lust

—— Guardian

Rose Tremain's thrilling Trespass is set in an obsure valley in Southern France... To be read slowly; Tremain's writing is too exquisite to hurry

—— The Times

Timeless but rooted; tangible but otherworldly. Meticulously plotted, with the musty sadness that comes of cleaving to the past, Trespass will reward your reading time

—— Scotland on Sunday

Rose Tremain's novel begins with a scream and barely loosens its grip amid the sumptuously written pages that follow...subtly harnesses the stifling heat and dangerously feral landscape of southern France to unspool a psychologically disconcerting story of family skeletons and outsider tensions

—— Metro

Like a sinister edition of A Place In the Sun directed by Alfred Hitchcock, with the depth and subtlety that make the book far more than a mere thriller

—— You Magazine (Daily Mail)
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