Long Wave, a hypnotic and haunting work of fiction about losing yourself and finding your family, is the finest novel yet from Booker Prize-shortlisted Daisy Johnson.
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In This Spotlight On Long Wave
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About Long Wave
Close to the shore is the island: uninhabited, wild, with only a storm-beaten lighthouse for shelter. Ori was found there as a small child with a handful of stones, no memories and no mother. When she has a baby of her own, the job of motherhood feels immense and sleepless nights begin to shatter her grip on reality. Her head fills with the sound of stones knocking against each other and the mystery of her past begins to unravel, opening a path to the mother she lost, and the mother she could become.
Years earlier, on a sweltering summer day, ten-year-old Ruth sees a woman and her baby walk into the river and disappear. But she is the only witness, and the water yields no trace. Ruth’s mother, Edith, locks her daughter away – first to restrain these wild imaginings, and later, when she falls pregnant, to hide the shame. Ruth longs to escape and dreams of the nearby island, where she and her baby can finally be free.
Told with mythic power and lyrical precision, Long Wave is an extraordinary novel of longing and loss, rebirth and survival.
Daisy Johnson’s debut novel, Everything Under, was a Finalist for the 2018 Booker Prize. Her sophomore novel Sisters garnered comparisons to literary luminary Ian McEwan and the exquisitely gothic Wuthering Heights.
Long Wave is a masterful interplay of perspectives, weaving between three generations of women at different stages of their lives. It’s a gloriously kaleidoscopic read for those who enjoy layered narratives that access an ensemble of interiorities.
Praise for Long Wave
“What a joy it is to read a writer who so confidently prioritizes character and language above gimmick or twist… Johnson goes far deeper than before in her examination of love and fear and separation [in Long Wave], and as a result creates a work that will endure with readers long after they have closed its pages.”—The Guardian
Long Wave is “A sweeping epic that is miraculously imagined and prismatically rendered in gorgeous prose. This book feels like a living, breathing thing, a creature all its own. Utterly stunning.”—Rachel Yoder, author of Nightbitch
“Looping through many years and many lives as it explores caregiving and failures of caregiving, [Long Wave] …is at once quiet and intense, at once devastating and heartening. I was carried by Johnson’s potent prose, and I was moved by these intersecting perspectives.”—Helen Phillips, author of The Need
“Long Wave, Daisy Johnson’s best novel in an already spectacular career, uncovers heart-rending truths in a multi-generational story of secrets, obsessions, and love. Hopeful, tragic, beautiful, captivating, consuming. A remarkable achievement—such depth, but also what a page-turner!”—Jeff VanderMeer, author of Annihilation
“Johnson writes of motherhood as a ferocious toppling, family as lightning that brachiates and crackles through a life. This is a novel of startling force. Readers will feel Long Wave in their teeth and bones.”—C Pam Zhang, author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold
“An astonishingly beautiful novel that remains grounded in the profound relationships between its characters. Long Wave is a triumph.”—Kaliane Bradley, author of The Ministry of Time
“Long Wave has the gravity of an epic… a gripping mystery and an unflinchingly observed treatise on the maelstrom of motherhood.”—Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Mercies
Long Wave is “Atmospheric and haunting.”—Booklist
About Daisy Johnson, Author of Long Wave
Daisy Johnson is the author of the novels Everything Under, a finalist for the 2018 Booker Prize, and Sisters, a New York Times notable book of the year, as well as the short story collection, Fen. She lives in Oxford, England.
Beyond her published fiction, Johnson has recently become known for her role in theater. She is the writer of Viola’s Room, the dramatic experience narrated by Helena Bonham Carter currently showing at The Shed in NYC, by the producers of Sleep No More. In 2024 she had a BBC Radio project of horror stories called The Hotel.
Deemed “a bold mind” and “an even stronger stylist” (The Boston Globe), Daisy Johnson writes in hypnotic prose that blends immersive, ambient descriptions with restraint and austerity. Her style is one of a kind, and the bold, uncanny landscapes she invents will leave a lasting impression on literary readers.
You can connect with Daisy Johnson on LinkedIn, and find more about her on Instagram.
Source: Publisher
Publisher: Riverhead Books | Penguin Random House
ISBN Hardcover 9780593188989
Pub Date Nov 24, 2026
LitStack Spots Titles by Daisy Johnson
Here are a few more LitStack Spots to buy for your TBR stack, including Sisters by Daisy Johnson, Everything Under by Daisy Johnson, and Fen: Stories by Daisy Johnson.
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