The Brightness

‘I could not put it down’ MADELINE CASH

The acclaimed author of The Art of Fielding returns with a long-awaited, immersive new novel. The Brightness follows the electric, chaotic, everything-can-happen lives of Pella Affenlight and her best friend, Irma, as they fumble their way into a larger world that won't stop changing.

At 27, Pella’s life looks settled: she’s a recent college graduate, engaged to Mike, her longtime boyfriend, and helping her friend Owen pull off his own destination wedding on Block Island. But over that wild wedding weekend, Pella’s past and present collide spectacularly, blowing up her plans and sending her spiralling toward an unplanned future in New York City.

There, in a city that’s equal parts glittering opportunity and cutthroat grit, Pella is forced to see herself in constantly changing lights as she wrestles with who she is and what she will become. As she cycles through possibilities and identities – is she an artist? A bartender? A scholar, a lover, a wife? – Pella navigates the heights and depths of passion and ambition, and the incalculable wages of love and loss.

In stunning scenes and spectacular characters, Chad Harbach captures that specific, shimmering anxiety of your twenties when life still feels wide open, even as hard and irreversible choices start closing in. Energetic, funny, and deeply human, this much-anticipated follow-up to The Art of Fielding confirms Chad Harbach as one of the most accomplished and perceptive writers of our time.

Reviews

Praise for The Brightness:

‘Captures the complicated nature of female friendship, and the wonderful excruciating confusion of growing up … I could not put it down, except when I had to in order to savour it’ Madeline Cash, author of Lost Lambs

Praise for The Art of Fielding:

‘First novels this complete and consuming come along very, very seldom’ Jonathan Franzen, author of Crossroads

‘A terrifically engaging novel … you will be rewarded by a page-turning, beguiling and wonderfully warm-hearted read’ Sunday Times

‘A big, beautiful blowout of a book, sure and generous … an exceptional debut’ Guardian

‘Wonderful … a novel that is every bit as entertaining as it is affecting’ New York Times

‘An outstanding novel about sport … in Henry Skrimshander, Harbach has created a character who will keep sports psychologists in conversation for years’ The Times

‘A charming, moving and slyly profound novel. You might even say Chad Harbach hit this one out of the park’ Sunday Telegraph

‘Dazzles and bewitches and inspires, until you nearly lose your breath from the enjoyment and satisfaction’ James Patterson, author of Delusional

‘An intricate, poised, tingling debut … leaves you longing, lingering, and a baseball convert long after the last page’ Téa Obreht, author of The Tiger’s Wife

‘Pure fun, easy to read, as if the other Fielding had a hand in it – as if Tom Jones were about baseball and college life’ John Irving, author of A Prayer for Owen Meany

About the author

Chad Harbach was raised in Racine, Wisconsin, and educated at Harvard and the University of Virginia. He is the author of the acclaimed novel The Art of Fielding, which has been translated into nineteen languages. He is also a founding editor of n+1.