This Is How

From the Man Booker–shortlisted author of Carry Me Down comes “an unflinching, absorbing, morally complex portrait” of a man in search of himself (The New York Times).

Patrick Oxtoby is a perpetual outsider who has always longed to find his place in the world. So when he’s faced with yet another disappointment after his fiancé breaks off their engagement, Patrick moves to a remote seaside village to escape.

But in spite of his hopes for a new and better life, Patrick still finds himself struggling to fit in. He can’t shake the feeling that his new friends are conspiring against him, further fracturing his already fragile personality and prompting him to take a course of action that permanently alters his life.

This Is How is a psychologically probing and deeply moving account of a man at odds with the world, and whose conflict with that unyielding reality leads to his own downfall. It is a masterpiece of inner tension that is “bleak yet moving, mercilessly dispassionate yet shot through with kindness and wit . . . a profound achievement” (The Guardian).