The World Beneath

This prize-winning debut novel from the author of Like a House on Fire is “reminiscent of Hornby . . . Well-observed and thoughtfully funny” (Minneapolis Star-Tribune).

Fifteen years after their breakup, Rich and Sandy have both settled into the unfulfilling compromises of middle age: he’s a late-night infomercial editor with photojournalism aspirations; she makes hippie jewelry for a local market and struggles to maintain a New Age lifestyle that fails to provide the answers she seeks. To distract themselves from their inadequacies, Rich and Sandy cling to the shining moment of their youth, when they met as environmental activists as part of a world-famous blockade to save Tasmania’s Franklin River.

Their daughter, Sophie, has always remained skeptical of this ecological fairytale, but when Rich invites her on a backpacking trip through Tasmania for her fifteenth birthday, Sophie sees it as a way to bond with a father she’s never known. As they progress further into the wilderness, the spell of Rich’s worldly charm soon gives way to suspicion and fear as his overconfidence sets off a chain of events that no one could have predicted.

“Kennedy evokes a more lyrical version of Jodi Picoult . . . hitting the reader with raw, heartbreaking, sometimes hilarious prose.” —Library Journal

“In elegant, fluidly written prose, Kennedy not only delivers scathing portraits of the ineffectual adults and the times that shaped them, but also makes the epic wilderness another vividly rendered character in the story.” —Booklist (starred review)

“Kennedy writes like an Antipodean Anne Tyler, wryly aware of the heart’s internal contradictions yet slow to judge.” —Financial Times