Ripeness Audiobook By Sarah Moss cover art

Ripeness

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Ripeness

By: Sarah Moss
Narrated by: Flora Montgomery
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About this listen

Moving from 60s Italy to contemporary Ireland, Ripeness is a breathtaking story of love and the search for belonging from Sarah Moss, bestselling author of Summerwater.

'Moss makes every moment count' -
The Sunday Times
'The achievement of a lifetime' - Jessie Burton
'Luminous' -
Financial Times
'A book of lasting pleasures' - Eleanor Catton
'A powerful and beautifully written story of family, friendship and identity' -
Guardian

On the brink of adulthood and just out of school, Edith finds herself travelling to rural Italy. She has been sent by her mother with strict instructions: to see her sister, ballet dancer Lydia, through the final weeks of her pregnancy, help at the birth and then make a phone call which will change all of their lives.

Decades later, happily divorced and newly energized, Edith is living in contentment and comfort in Ireland. When her best friend Méabh receives a call from an American man claiming to be her brother, Méabh must decide if she will meet him, and Edith finds herself plunged back into her own past and the story of the baby she once knew and loved.

'Tender and rueful . . . Sarah Moss is a marvel of insight and eloquence' - Emma Donoghue
'One of our greatest living writers' - Katherine May, author of
Wintering

©2025 Sarah Moss (P)2025 Macmillan Publishers International Limited
Genre Fiction Literary Fiction
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Critic reviews

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, Booker prize-winning author of The Luminaries and Birnam Wood)
This book felt to me like I was reading the achievement of a lifetime, written by one of the best writers alive. Moving, unexpected, masterful, it is a story of stories, of belonging, of exits and entrances, and everything in between. Moss’s understanding of who her characters are is also her understanding of all of us. A beautiful, powerful read that echoed for me long after (Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist)
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 Room)
A luminous tale about borders, bodies and a sense of belonging (Thomas McMullan, Financial Times)
Sarah Moss is one of the best writers working today, and this might be her best book yet. A wise and tender novel about birth, ballet and belonging, it captivated me completely (Bobby Palmer, author of Isaac and the Egg)
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