Ripeness
A Novel
by Sarah Moss
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Pub Date Sep 09 2025 | Archive Date Oct 09 2025
Description
A Best Book of the Year: Literary Hub, Prospect Magazine (UK)
"The contemporary writer I recommend the most. . . It’s difficult to pinpoint her genius, but. . . I’m talking about the distant echoes of regret that wake us in the night whispering that eternal question: Is that all there is? And what makes Moss so brilliant is that though her answer to that is an emphatic YES, she nonetheless writes us worlds so radiant that it doesn’t even matter. –Jared Diamond, Literary Hub
A story of sisterhood, forbidden desire, lost connection, and what it means to find a home among strangers.
Edith, just out of school, has been sent from her quiet English life to rural Italy. It is the 1960s, and her mother has issued strict instructions: tend to her ballerina sister, Lydia, in the final weeks of her scandalous pregnancy; help at the birth; make a phone call that will summon the nuns who will spirit the child away to a new home.
Decades later, happily divorced, recently moved, and full of new energy, Edith has fashioned a life of contentment and comfort in Ireland. Then her best friend, Méabh, receives a shocking phone call from an American man. He claims to be a brother she never knew existed: a child her mother gave up and never spoke of again. As Edith helps her friend reckon with this new idea of connection and how it might change her life, her thoughts turn back to Lydia and the fractured history of her own family. What did they give up when they sent the baby away? What kind of family has he been given? What kind of life? And how was hers changed by his arrival and departure?
In Ripeness, Sarah Moss has again tapped into the questions that haunt us individually and as communities. This extraordinary novel explores familial love and the bonds we forge across time, migration and new beginnings, and what it means to find somewhere to belong.
A Note From the Publisher
Advance Praise
“Sex and childbirth, emigrant and exile, the present and the past: Sarah Moss’s ambidextrous talent is evident on every page of this elegant novel. It is intelligent, but never disembodied; evocative, but never sentimental; honest, but never cruel. Ripeness is a book of tart and lasting pleasures.” —Eleanor Catton, author of Birnam Wood
“Tender and rueful, Ripeness is a tale of being a foreigner that moves between 1960s Italy and 2020s Ireland, finding pain and bliss in both. Working at the height of her mature powers, Sarah Moss is a marvel of insight and eloquence.” —Emma Donoghue, author of The Paris Express
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9780374609016 |
| PRICE | $28.00 (USD) |
| PAGES | 304 |
Available on NetGalley
Average rating from 64 members
Featured Reviews
Bookseller 1771144
Ripeness questions what it means to belong somewhere, what home really is. For those who are forcibly removed from places torn by war, those who’ve been adopted by their parents, and those who have chosen to create a home somewhere else.
Identity is something blurry, bendable, weak to pressure. While our rules around nationality are not. It’s a messy thing to consider, but Moss has created a beautiful narrative to think it through.
I loved getting to know Edith through two timelines. Moss’ writing is absolutely fantastic, especially her descriptions of the land around the characters. A wonderful story I didn’t want to leave but didn’t leave me wanting more as the ending was beautiful.
Kimberley B, Reviewer
This one is giving me Booker vibes. I feel like this one has many things in common with Stone Yard Devotional, which is equally exceptional. Both books feature a woman reflecting on her past and particularly on moments where they didn’t act.
There is teenage Edith who is sent to Italy to stay with her older sister who is living in exile from their parents and town and who is hiding the fact that she is pregnant. Edith is curious and yet she is very uneasy in this environment. She tries her best. This Edith is in the first person narrative.
Then there is older Edith, grappling with aging, friendship and what it means to tell or withhold the truth. This Edith contemplates issues like migration, marriage and divorce and displacement and belonging. She is unfailingly honest and doesn’t care if you like her or not. This Edith is in the third person narrative.
The writing is quite lyrical, atmospheric and full of passages worthy of highlighting. The use of two narratives to reflect the differences in the two timelines as Edith matures is very clever.
This review is kind of vague, but I don’t want to spoil too much. I just feel that this story has so much meaning and is the type of book that deserves more than one reading to grasp all the nuance.
Suffice it to say, this one is a winner for me. 4.5 stars.
Thank you Farrar, Straus and Giroux and NetGalley for the ARC.
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