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Deep in the woods of northern England, somewhere between a dilapidated estate and an abandoned Victorian asylum, fifteen-year-old Jane Standen lived through a nightmare. She was babysitting a sweet young girl named Lily, and in one fleeting moment, lost her. The little girl was never found, leaving her family and Jane devastated.
Twenty years later, Jane is an archivist at a small London museum that is about to close for lack of funding. As a final research project - an endeavor inspired in part by her painful past - Jane surveys the archives for information related to another missing person: a woman who disappeared over one hundred years ago in the same woods where Lily was lost. As Jane pieces moments in history together, a portrait of a fascinating group of people starts to unfurl. Inexplicably tied to the mysterious disappearance of long ago, Jane finds tender details of their lives at the country estate and in the asylum that are linked to her own heartbroken world, and their story from all those years ago may now help Jane find a way to move on.
In riveting, beautiful prose, The World Before Us explores the powerful notion that history is a closely connected part of us - kept alive by the resonance of our daily choices - reminding us of the possibility that we are less alone than we might think.
"Jane's story is an emotionally and intellectually satisfying journey in the manner of A.S. Byatt's Possession and Tom Stoppard's Arcadia. And like those two works' juxtaposition of past and present, this one movingly dramatizes how unknowable the past can be." - Publishers Weekly
"Not an easy read but a compelling exploration of how memory shapes and is shaped by individuals and society." - Kirkus
"Hunter (Stay, 2005) explores the way the past bleeds into the present and how recorded history can never come close to capturing the richness of a person's interior life. If the narrative is sometimes too crowded with voices, Hunter's beautiful prose and knowledge of the Victorian era are their own reward." - Booklist
"Reminiscent of A.S. Byatt's Possession, it is the sort of novel which forces you to look at the world – the people around you, the objects they hold dear – in a different light." - Globe and Mail
"Intricately composed and gripping…With The World Before Us, [Hunter] has created her most ambitious and original work." - Quill and Quire
"The historical detail never overwhelms; instead it brings alive the past and shows the seamlessness of past and present, especially the human need for contact, which transcends time and place." - The Vancouver Sun
This information about The World Before Us was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Aislinn Hunter is the author of an acclaimed collection of stories, two collections of highly-praised and award-winning poetry, and the novel Stay which was recently made in to a feature film. Having lived in the UK while researching her Ph.D., Hunter now lives and teaches in Vancouver, British Columbia. The World Before Us is her US debut.
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