Ruth

Intimate and inviting... Riley’s arresting debut [...]rebuts more orthodox modes of storytelling and plotting, while also challenging ideas we might hold about what exactly it is that gives our lives meaning... through it all, Riley’s transcendently plain-spoken prose is imbued with what we might best describe as linguistic grace. * Daily Telegraph *
Really scratches the itch of 'voyeuristic curiosity about what goes on in fundamentalist religious communities' and is also so well written that it’s freakishly astonishing that it’s a first novel. Also: funny. * New York Magazine, Emily Gould *
[Ruth’s] mischievous and capricious joy casts an afterglow on this novel like sunlight through cloud. * Daily Mail *
Cheeky, inquisitive . . . A charming deep dive into the life and faith of one devout yet contrary everywoman. * Kirkus, starred review *
An irresistibly smart and funny novel * Jenny Offill, author of Weather, shortlisted for the Women’s Prize For Fiction *
The serenely weird testament of an unintentional heroine in an intentional community and an act of novelistic grace that deserves not only cult status but its own religion. * Joshua Cohen, The Netanyahus, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2022 *
A delightful, quietly explosive, triumph of a novel, Ruth shimmers with a quiet sadness whilst being almost fiendishly playful. A marvel. I can imagine how readers of Marilynne Robinson will absolutely press it to their hearts. * Gemma Reeves, author of Mamele *
A detailed, delicate study of how character is formed by collision with so many sharp corners that they form a perfect circle – how we entrap ourselves in the choices of others, glimpsing freedom in flashes like lightning on the horizon. * Nell Zink, author of Mislaid, listed for the National Book Award *
This novel asks big questions about what kind of impositions we live according to, and what is the most likely path to happiness. * Big Issue *
There’s something arrestingly odd about Kate Riley’s debut, and not just because it’s set in America’s religious communes. Ruth has all the repressed horror one might expect, as its titular protagonist grows up in these isolated spaces (Riley herself lived in a similar commune). But at the same time, there’s acid wit and irony at play here too, which makes Riley’s central character simultaneously a passive observer and agonised, misunderstood critic. * Observer *