The Brightness

‘I could not put it down’ MADELINE CASH

‘Brilliant and enchanting’ NATHAN HILL

‘Deeply absorbing, vivid, and humane’ LISA HALLIDAY

From the acclaimed author of The Art of Fielding comes a deeply felt story of friendship, art, love and grief, following two young women on the brink of irrevocable change.

At 27, Pella’s life looks settled: she’s a recent college grad, 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. Meanwhile, back at Westish College, her best friend Irma’s involvement with a politically charged prank – one that has roiled both the campus and the world beyond – threatens to derail her brilliant future.

As Irma and Pella fumble their way out of sleepy Westish College and into adulthood, they find themselves greeted by a world of possibility that will upend their friendship and everything they thought they understood about one another.

The Brightness 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, it confirms Chad Harbach as one of the most accomplished and perceptive writers of our time.

‘Captures the complicated nature of female friendship, and the wonderful excruciating confusion of growing up’ MADELINE CASH, author of Lost Lambs

‘A monumental campus novel, full of smart and mercurial characters who feel as real as your own roommates’ TOM PERROTTA, author of Ghost Town

About the author

Chad Harbach is the author of the bestselling novel The Art of Fielding, which has been translated into more than twenty languages, and a founder of n+1. He was raised in Racine, Wisconsin, and educated at Harvard and the University of Virginia. He lives in Northern California with his son, Ansel, and their dog, Curtis.