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Line You Have Traced

Published by Magpie
Distributed by Simon & Schuster

About The Book

‘We can fix what we have done. We can undo the mistakes our ancestors made. We can set right what has been done wrong... You are the first step.’

In a silverware shop, a young wife works alongside her husband. Amid growing political turmoil, Bea finds solace in the local marsh, where she is visited recurrently by a mysterious presence, logging each appearance carefully in a scarlet journal.

In a time like now, Kay navigates friendship, queerness and the temporary job market, whilst contemplating the significance of her life in a world with such an uncertain future. At her grandmother’s house she finds an intriguing record of an angel’s visits.

A hundred years into the future, outsiders have banded together to live off-grid away from a corrupt government and a city wracked by oppression and climate change. When Ess is chosen for a virgin mission, a journey into the past to save the present, she is guided only by a well-thumbed red notebook…

Set against the shifting scape of East London marshes and expanding over three centuries, this is the breathtaking, urgent story of three women separated by history but threaded together by unknown forces.

About The Author

Product Details

  • Publisher: Magpie (April 10, 2025)
  • Length: 400 pages
  • ISBN13: 9780861547487

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Raves and Reviews

‘I don’t know which I admire more: the casual beauty of the sentences, the cunning of the design, or the tact and compassion with which A Line You Have Traced weaves together its three layers of time into its instructions for the end of our world.’ Francis Spufford, author of Golden Hill

'This is a gloriously innovative, endlessly surprising gut punch of a novel. Dunnett is a dazzlingly original, luminous new voice in fiction… If the novel has any future at all, then this is it.' Rebecca Tamás, author of Witch

'Magnificent. No word is wasted, and even the most economical of Roisin Dunnett’s sentences can make you understand emotions you’ve never experienced... The subject matter is colossal, but the writing is always intimate, navigating time’s expanse through the little people suspended in it and the little ways they (we) try to connect.' Sue Gives a F**k

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