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Groundskeeping

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'Beautifully textured ... Anne Tyler by way of Sally Rooney.' New York Times
'A coming-of-age story inextricably bound with a love story.' MAGGIE SHIPSTEAD
'Smart, funny, exhilarating.' LILY KING

Eager to clean up his act after his troubled early twenties, Owen has returned to Kentucky to take a job as a groundskeeper at a small college in the Appalachian foothills, one which allows him to enrol on their writing course.

It's there that he meets Alma, a Writer-in-Residence, who seems to have everything Owen doesn't - a prestigious position, an Ivy League education, and published success as a writer. They begin a secret relationship, and as they grow closer, Alma, from a supportive, liberal family of Bosnian immigrants, struggles to understand Owen's fraught relationship with his own family and home.

Exploring the boundaries between life and art, and how our upbringings affect the people we can become, Groundskeeping is at heart a love story - a novel about two very different people navigating the turbulence of an all-consuming relationship, and the complications which can ruin it.

©2022 Lee Cole (P)2022 Faber & Faber Coming of Age Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction World Literature Heartfelt
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Unexceptional and disappointing. Was expecting more given its publisher. Very much reads like an inexperienced and weak product of a creative writing workshop. Style and use language are prosaic. Characters are flat, with no real sense of connection to each other or individual identify to leave a lasting impression on the reader. Maybe it’s generational but the thought that this may be the direction of modern literature (aka Sally Rooney and the pseudo intellectuals drawing undeserved attention, I’ll stick to people who can actually write.

Groundskeeping

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