Blue Hour: A Fearless and Timely Debut - One of Barack Obama's Summer Reading Selections

** ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S SUMMER READING SELECTIONS **

What is motherhood in the midst of uncertainty, buried trauma and an unravelling America? What it's always been – a love song.

Our narrator is a gifted photographer, an uncertain wife, an infertile mother, a biracial woman in an America that's coming undone. As she grapples with a lifetime of ambivalence about motherhood, yet another act of police brutality makes headlines, and this time the victim is Noah, a boy in her photography class.

Unmoored by the grief of a recent, devastating miscarriage and Noah's fight for his life, she worries she can no longer chase the hope of having a child, no longer wants to bring a Black body into the world. Yet her husband Asher – contributing white Jewish genes alongside her Black-Japanese ones to any potential child - is just as desperate to keep trying.

Throwing herself into a new documentary on motherhood and making secret visits to Noah in the hospital, this is when she learns she is, impossibly, pregnant. As life shifts once more, she must decide what she dares hope for the shape of her future to be.

Fearless, timely, blazing with voice, Blue Hour is a fragmentary debut with unignorable storytelling power. The perfect next read for fans of Raven Leilani's Luster, Jenny Offill's Weather and Bernardine Evaristo's Girl, Woman, Other.

'A portrait of determined creativity and the attempt to live authentically in a changing world. It's full of zest and keen observation, with a likeable, intimate tone that cuts through its potentially dark subject matter' - FINANCIAL TIMES

'Gasp-worthy… How did Harrison achieve this spectacular feat of emotional withholding while also making readers feel so much?' – VULTURE

'Incredibly powerful' – GOOD MORNING AMERICA

'A brave new writer' – PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY

'An urgent, heartbreaking, and profound meditation on motherhood, art-making, uncertainty, the ongoing violence of American racism and police brutality, and the courage it takes to choose the future' – BUZZFEED

This novel contains depictions of police brutality and miscarriage.

© 2024 Verve Books (Ebook): 9780857308788

Release date

Ebook: 28 March 2024