The best people in the world - Justin Tussing

A lyrical coming-of-age story from a brilliant new voice in American fiction.

Thomas, a seventeen-year-old with the face of an angel, is living with his parents in a house that has begun to feel crowded: Alice, his high-school teacher and first love, is getting calls from her violent ex-husband; and Shiloh, a survivor of a life lived on the fringes, has seen his shack swept away by the mighty Ohio.

They run away together - in pursuit of an ideal that none of them are quite able to define - finding shelter in an abandoned farmhouse in the hills of Vermont. But as the chill of autumn sets in, dependency and deprivation begin to take their toll and Thomas starts to see this time - when he was with 'the best people in the world' - come to an end.

A journey, a coming of age, a novel of our need to hold onto meaning in whatever form it may take, 'The Best People in the World' is a masterful illumination of a moment when everything was perfect and the realisation that nothing gold can stay.

Justin Tussing went to the University of New Hampshire and received his MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop, where he was a Teaching/Writing Fellow. He has received numerous fellowships and is a former director of the Iowa Young Writers Studio. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts. This is his first novel.

'Tussing's first novel is a small marvel of literary and emotional imagination.' Daily Telegraph

'Tussing.writes ravishingly.this joyous celebration of domestic life is his novel.' Observer

'[Tussing's] style is delicately textured. Elegaic.description is part of a versatile range of registers that extends to laconic comedy.' Wednesday Book, Independent

'It reads as a mysterious, fearless and ultimately heartbreaking journey into adulthood.' Works Magazine

'Clearly a writer to watch.' Metro

'Be rewarded with a truly beautiful read.' Big Issue

'Justin Tussing possesses a remarkable sort of double vision: he sees what is strange and wondrous in the ordinary world, yet he also divines what is deeply human in the oddest of souls. His gifts are brought fully to bear in this beautiful, fearless novel, which explores the hazards of inventing a family and conjuring up a home. By turns comic and mysterious and wild, ultimately this is a heartbreaking book. Like all great elegiac novels, "The Best People in the World" makes us ache for what has been lost; we feel that we will never again find ourselves in such rare company, experiencing such luminous moments.' Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, author of 'Madeleine is Sleeping'