The Lightness

'Funny, whip-smart and transcendently wise about friendship, family, lust and love' Jenny Offill, author of Dept. of Speculation and Weather

'The Lightness could be the love child of Donna Tartt and Tana French' Chloe Benjamin, author of The Immortalists

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 stylish, suspenseful meditation on adolescent desire, female friendship, and the female body that shimmers with rage, wit, and fierce longing - for fans of Emma Cline, Ottessa Moshfegh, and Jenny Offill

'A darkly funny, luminously drawn mystery that hits bullseye after bullseye: swift, surprising, and utterly captivating' Téa Obreht, author of Inland and The Tiger's Wife
 
'This remarkable novel is made up of equal parts desire and dread; it constantly surprised me, eerily outpacing my expectations' Garth Greenwell, author of What Belongs to You

'Emily Temple's debut The Lightness grants us a bold, smart, hilarious new voice. A classic must read!' Mary Karr, author of Lit