The Lightness

‘A psychologically smart debut that swathes teen desire and friendship in mystery and mirth’ Observer

‘Like a twisted Malory Towers or maybe a cosmic version of ‘Heathers’’ Daily Mail

‘Funny, whip-smart and transcendently wise’ Jenny Offill

‘The love child of Donna Tartt and Tana French’ Chloe Benjamin

One year ago, the person Olivia adores most in the world, her father, left home for a meditation retreat in the mountains and never returned. Yearning to make sense of his shocking departure, Olivia runs away from home and retraces his path to a place known as the Levitation Center.

There, she enrolls in their summer program for troubled teens, a ‘Buddhist Boot Camp for Bad Girls’, and finds herself drawn into the company of a close-knit trio of girls determined that this is the summer they will finally learn to levitate, to defy the weight of their bodies, to experience ultimate lightness.

But as desire and danger intertwine, and Olivia comes ever closer to discovering what a body – and a girl – is capable of, it becomes increasingly clear that this is an advanced and perilous practice, and there’s a chance not all of them will survive…

‘A beautiful meditation on meditation…populated with girls who refuse to act the way they’re expected to; who have too much passion, too many feelings and nowhere to put them’ New York Times

‘A disquieting and astute reflection on desire, truth, friendship and the siren call of weightlessness’ Daily Mail

‘A darkly funny, luminously drawn mystery’ Téa Obreht, author of Inland and The Tiger’s Wife

‘This remarkable novel is made up of equal parts desire and dread’ Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You

‘A bold, smart, hilarious new voice. A classic must read!’ Mary Karr, author of Lit

Reviews

‘Glitters with poignant observations about desire and womanhood’ – Marie Claire

‘A psychologically smart debut that swathes teen desire and friendship in mystery and mirth.’ – Observer

‘Cool, dark, and pretty as a clear night sky… a coming-of-age suspense tale’ – Entertainment Weekly

‘A gorgeous read with complex characters, whose menace is wrapped in prose that reads like a dark fairy tale’ – Psychologies

‘This is a disquieting and astute reflection on desire, truth, friendship and the siren call of weightlessness.’ – Daily Mail

“Temple's narrative strategies of deferral invite us into a complex, psychological study of a young woman haunted by her past—and her capacity to hunger for violence and self-destruction. A dark, glittering fable about the terror of desire.” – Kirkus (starred review)

‘A suspenseful debut’ – People Magazine

‘A rich meditation on the nature of desire and belonging… Temple is an excellent writer’ – Los Angeles Times

‘It’s like a twisted Malory Towers or maybe a cosmic version of Heathers: teenage violence, sex and envy mix up with Eastern theology.’ – Daily Mail