Genre Fiction
![Sarah Manguso - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B001JRRLZ0.jpg)
Very Cold People: A Novel
The eagerly awaited debut novel from "one of the most original and exciting writers working in English today" (Jhumpa Lahiri): a masterwork on growing up in-and out of-the suffocating constraints of small-town America.
ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022-Oprah Daily, Good Housekeeping, The Week, The Millions, She Reads, Lit Hub
"My parents didn't belong in Waitsfield, but they moved there anyway."
For Ruthie, the frozen town of Waitsfield, Massachusetts, is all she has ever known.
Once home to the country's oldest and most illustrious families-the Cabots, the Lowells: the "first, best people"-by the tail end of the twentieth century, it is an unforgiving place awash with secrets.
Forged in this frigid landscape Ruthie has been dogged by feelings of inadequacy her whole life. Hers is no picturesque New England childhood but one of swap meets and factory seconds and powdered milk. Shame blankets her like the thick snow that regularly buries nearly everything in Waitsfield.
As she grows older, Ruthie slowly learns how the town's prim facade conceals a deeper, darker history, and how silence often masks a legacy of harm-from the violence that runs down the family line to the horrors endured by her high school friends, each suffering a fate worse than the last. For Ruthie, Waitsfield is a place to be survived, and a girl like her would be lucky to get out alive.
In her eagerly anticipated debut novel, Sarah Manguso has written, with characteristic precision, a masterwork on growing up in-and out of-the suffocating constraints of a very old, and very cold, small town. At once an ungilded portrait of girlhood at the crossroads of history and social class as well as a vital confrontation with an all-American whiteness where the ice of emotional restraint meets the embers of smoldering rage, Very Cold People is a haunted jewel of a novel from one of our most virtuosic literary writers.
ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022-Oprah Daily, Good Housekeeping, The Week, The Millions, She Reads, Lit Hub
"My parents didn't belong in Waitsfield, but they moved there anyway."
For Ruthie, the frozen town of Waitsfield, Massachusetts, is all she has ever known.
Once home to the country's oldest and most illustrious families-the Cabots, the Lowells: the "first, best people"-by the tail end of the twentieth century, it is an unforgiving place awash with secrets.
Forged in this frigid landscape Ruthie has been dogged by feelings of inadequacy her whole life. Hers is no picturesque New England childhood but one of swap meets and factory seconds and powdered milk. Shame blankets her like the thick snow that regularly buries nearly everything in Waitsfield.
As she grows older, Ruthie slowly learns how the town's prim facade conceals a deeper, darker history, and how silence often masks a legacy of harm-from the violence that runs down the family line to the horrors endured by her high school friends, each suffering a fate worse than the last. For Ruthie, Waitsfield is a place to be survived, and a girl like her would be lucky to get out alive.
In her eagerly anticipated debut novel, Sarah Manguso has written, with characteristic precision, a masterwork on growing up in-and out of-the suffocating constraints of a very old, and very cold, small town. At once an ungilded portrait of girlhood at the crossroads of history and social class as well as a vital confrontation with an all-American whiteness where the ice of emotional restraint meets the embers of smoldering rage, Very Cold People is a haunted jewel of a novel from one of our most virtuosic literary writers.
Editorial Reviews
"Sarah Manguso is one of the most original and exciting writers working in English today. Every word feels necessary, and she's redefining genre as she goes."-Jhumpa Lahiri, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Interpreter of Maladies
"Very Cold People knocked me to my knees. So precise, so austere, so elegant, this story is devastatingly familiar to those of us who know the loneliness of growing up in a place of extreme emotional restraint. Manguso is one of my favorite writers, and this book is a revelation."-Lauren Groff, author of Florida
"A haunted masterpiece, written with the precision of a miniaturist and the vulnerability of true heartache. I wept more than once; I recognized myself more than once. Very Cold People proves yet again that Manguso is one of the greats."-Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Less
"I loved every sentence, thought, and gesture in this perfect novel. Sarah Manguso has painted a deeply moving portrait of the stark unreality of childhood."-Catherine Lacey, author of Pew
"A poignant and unnerving masterwork about growing up in a dominator society, told with the concision, carefulness, and sense of mystery that we've come to expect from Sarah Manguso."-Tao Lin, author of Leave Society
"This gritty coming-of-age tale follows friendships, crushes, and fantasies. . . Manguso paints a haunting portrait of innocence lost . . . masterfully unveil[ing] the tragic and disturbing fates of girls in Waitsfield. A gripping debut novel on the vulnerability of girlhood for readers who enjoy steady but intense storytelling."-Booklist
"A bracing coming-of-age story and master class in controlled style . . . Manguso is a lovely writer about unlovely things. . . . But the elegance doesn't diminish the emotional impact of her story and the journey of becoming mature enough to understand transgression, be horrified by it, and search for a means to escape it . . . A taut, blisteringly smart novel, both measured and rageful." -Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Very Cold People knocked me to my knees. So precise, so austere, so elegant, this story is devastatingly familiar to those of us who know the loneliness of growing up in a place of extreme emotional restraint. Manguso is one of my favorite writers, and this book is a revelation."-Lauren Groff, author of Florida
"A haunted masterpiece, written with the precision of a miniaturist and the vulnerability of true heartache. I wept more than once; I recognized myself more than once. Very Cold People proves yet again that Manguso is one of the greats."-Andrew Sean Greer, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Less
"I loved every sentence, thought, and gesture in this perfect novel. Sarah Manguso has painted a deeply moving portrait of the stark unreality of childhood."-Catherine Lacey, author of Pew
"A poignant and unnerving masterwork about growing up in a dominator society, told with the concision, carefulness, and sense of mystery that we've come to expect from Sarah Manguso."-Tao Lin, author of Leave Society
"This gritty coming-of-age tale follows friendships, crushes, and fantasies. . . Manguso paints a haunting portrait of innocence lost . . . masterfully unveil[ing] the tragic and disturbing fates of girls in Waitsfield. A gripping debut novel on the vulnerability of girlhood for readers who enjoy steady but intense storytelling."-Booklist
"A bracing coming-of-age story and master class in controlled style . . . Manguso is a lovely writer about unlovely things. . . . But the elegance doesn't diminish the emotional impact of her story and the journey of becoming mature enough to understand transgression, be horrified by it, and search for a means to escape it . . . A taut, blisteringly smart novel, both measured and rageful." -Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Short Excerpt Teaser
1
My parents didn't belong in Waitsfield, but they moved there anyway. My mother answered the first knock at the door of the new house, expecting a casserole. We'd painted the house Evening Fog, she told me, but the woman from across the street wanted to know why we'd painted it purple like Italians. Some people wore their difference honestly, but my parents were liars, illegitimate Waitsfielders, their off-whiteness discovered only after the paint had dried. By the time I was born, the house had faded to the color of dirty snow.
The oldest houses in Waitsfield were older than the town and bore plaques to mark their age. Generations of families had been born and died in them, and the town's six graveyards were populated mostly by children. Over the centuries the slate stones had eroded and sunk in the dirt, and they looked like gray, crooked teeth inscribed with little lambs and angels.
On the way to school I walked past a three-hundred-year-old mustard-yellow saltbox that my mother admired for its leaded glass windows and historically correct paint color. It probably had all the right antique fixtures inside, big sooty hearths and Indian shutters, visible proof of connection to the first, best people.
My mother referred to western Massachusetts as out west, and I was mostly ignorant of the geography beyond our neighborhood. Three-quarters of the town stayed unknown to me, and that mystery drummed up a sense of scale. To this day I couldn't tell you how to get to the Lodge School, where the rich kids went. It was just there, somewhere, in those ten square miles, not for me to find.
I often asked my mother to drive us down to the part of town where every house had a plaque. It looked like a movie set. I knew a girl whose house had been used in a television ad for a clothing store. The ad was shot in the spring, and the crew had sprayed the lawn and the windowsills with sticky fake snow.
At home, my mother cut out wedding announcements from the Courier, the only paper in town. Maybe the groom was a Cabot, and the bride was an Emerson, and they sat on the boards of libraries and museums. My mother didn't know these people, but she liked the way they looked on our refrigerator.
She also liked to study an old typeset record of the town's census, turning the well-handled pages as one would a beloved picture book, but there were no pictures, just lists of names and addresses. She cross-referenced the addresses with real estate listings in the Courier each week. Sometimes she took me to look at the big old houses. I never saw any people, just the houses, big Georgian colonials with widow's walks and little gabled windows like third eyes opening.
I liked the estates, too, especially on Pond Road, which my mother told me was the most expensive street in town. Pond was a dead end, so it took some persuading to get my mother to drive the length of it and turn the car around, but when I reminded her that we'd never seen another soul walking or even driving around there, she could be tempted. Those houses weren't old. They were just enormous and ornate, with statuary and foreign-made cars. A couple of them were always under construction and hidden under blue tarps.
I recognized the difference between the houses that were the oldest and those that were merely the most expensive. I liked the old houses, and I swooned over the girls and boys at school with names like Verity and Cornelius. I knew that I could never build the kind of relationship with money that the people in those stately, drafty, oldest houses enjoyed. I didn't even bother trying to infiltrate them. I worshipped them from a distance.
In our house the old paint on the windowsill had its own sweet smell, different from the wall paint. I felt all around the window sash to find a draft, but there was none. The cold was just everywhere. After the monthly mortgage payment, my parents had almost nothing left over, and we had to be careful.
For one thing, the bathtub had to be filled to the height of my hand, and no higher. I pressed my fingertips into the bottom of the tub, not knowing where my hand ended and my wrist began.
One summer I found a green garden hose on the ground next to a neighbor's house. The hose had been left on. I tried to calculate the amount of water that had been wasted. What are we gonna do? I asked the other kids. They didn't answer. Adrenaline spilled into my blood. Water poured into the muddy ground.
An old Irish cable-knit cardigan with leather buttons hung in the downstairs coat closet, which smelled of hot farts and smoke. If anyone ever needed a sweater, they could go and put on the warming sweater, which was its name,...
My parents didn't belong in Waitsfield, but they moved there anyway. My mother answered the first knock at the door of the new house, expecting a casserole. We'd painted the house Evening Fog, she told me, but the woman from across the street wanted to know why we'd painted it purple like Italians. Some people wore their difference honestly, but my parents were liars, illegitimate Waitsfielders, their off-whiteness discovered only after the paint had dried. By the time I was born, the house had faded to the color of dirty snow.
The oldest houses in Waitsfield were older than the town and bore plaques to mark their age. Generations of families had been born and died in them, and the town's six graveyards were populated mostly by children. Over the centuries the slate stones had eroded and sunk in the dirt, and they looked like gray, crooked teeth inscribed with little lambs and angels.
On the way to school I walked past a three-hundred-year-old mustard-yellow saltbox that my mother admired for its leaded glass windows and historically correct paint color. It probably had all the right antique fixtures inside, big sooty hearths and Indian shutters, visible proof of connection to the first, best people.
My mother referred to western Massachusetts as out west, and I was mostly ignorant of the geography beyond our neighborhood. Three-quarters of the town stayed unknown to me, and that mystery drummed up a sense of scale. To this day I couldn't tell you how to get to the Lodge School, where the rich kids went. It was just there, somewhere, in those ten square miles, not for me to find.
I often asked my mother to drive us down to the part of town where every house had a plaque. It looked like a movie set. I knew a girl whose house had been used in a television ad for a clothing store. The ad was shot in the spring, and the crew had sprayed the lawn and the windowsills with sticky fake snow.
At home, my mother cut out wedding announcements from the Courier, the only paper in town. Maybe the groom was a Cabot, and the bride was an Emerson, and they sat on the boards of libraries and museums. My mother didn't know these people, but she liked the way they looked on our refrigerator.
She also liked to study an old typeset record of the town's census, turning the well-handled pages as one would a beloved picture book, but there were no pictures, just lists of names and addresses. She cross-referenced the addresses with real estate listings in the Courier each week. Sometimes she took me to look at the big old houses. I never saw any people, just the houses, big Georgian colonials with widow's walks and little gabled windows like third eyes opening.
I liked the estates, too, especially on Pond Road, which my mother told me was the most expensive street in town. Pond was a dead end, so it took some persuading to get my mother to drive the length of it and turn the car around, but when I reminded her that we'd never seen another soul walking or even driving around there, she could be tempted. Those houses weren't old. They were just enormous and ornate, with statuary and foreign-made cars. A couple of them were always under construction and hidden under blue tarps.
I recognized the difference between the houses that were the oldest and those that were merely the most expensive. I liked the old houses, and I swooned over the girls and boys at school with names like Verity and Cornelius. I knew that I could never build the kind of relationship with money that the people in those stately, drafty, oldest houses enjoyed. I didn't even bother trying to infiltrate them. I worshipped them from a distance.
In our house the old paint on the windowsill had its own sweet smell, different from the wall paint. I felt all around the window sash to find a draft, but there was none. The cold was just everywhere. After the monthly mortgage payment, my parents had almost nothing left over, and we had to be careful.
For one thing, the bathtub had to be filled to the height of my hand, and no higher. I pressed my fingertips into the bottom of the tub, not knowing where my hand ended and my wrist began.
One summer I found a green garden hose on the ground next to a neighbor's house. The hose had been left on. I tried to calculate the amount of water that had been wasted. What are we gonna do? I asked the other kids. They didn't answer. Adrenaline spilled into my blood. Water poured into the muddy ground.
An old Irish cable-knit cardigan with leather buttons hung in the downstairs coat closet, which smelled of hot farts and smoke. If anyone ever needed a sweater, they could go and put on the warming sweater, which was its name,...
