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A Novel
by Kirsten Tranter
Paperback Original. A thrilling and addictive novel about three unlikely friends and the web of lies that unravels after one of them goes missing.
At the center of The Legacy is the story of Julia Alpers, her friend Ralph, and the beautiful and wealthy Ingrid. As students in Sydney, the bond that ties this threesome together is complex—delicate and intense, shaped by intellect, and defined by desire. When Ingrid falls in love and marries the much older and very handsome Gil Grey, she decides to leave her friends and settle in New York City, where Gil is a major player in the art world. It is here that she becomes stepmother to Gil’s teenage daughter, a former child prodigy, and begins her own work on rare, ancient texts called "curse scrolls" at Columbia University. But on the morning of September 11, 2001, she has an appointment downtown. And is never seen again. Devastated and heartsick, Ralph sends Julia to New York to investigate Ingrid’s last days. What Julia discovers plunges her more deeply into Ingrid’s life than she could ever imagine. As Julia grows closer to unearthing the truth about Ingrid’s death, she is forced to confront her conflicted feelings about her former friend and to make a crucial decision about her own future.
Praised by international critics as an "entertaining literary thriller that skillfully describes the almost pleasurable pain of love and life denied" (The Australian), The Legacy is an utterly addictive and beautifully written novel that introduces a brilliant new voice in fiction.
"Starred Review. [A] goldmine of literary references, and finding them can be both fun and challenging. A promising beginning to what will undoubtedly be a successful writing career." - Kirkus Reviews
"Starred Review. While Tranter's sedate pacing avoids typical thriller antics and conventional crime plot twists, she raises some wickedly keen questions about art world wheeling and dealing." - Publishers Weekly
"A gripping and deeply moving novel." - The Australian Literary Review
“I don't know where I've read a better evocation of the unbearable pain of unrequited love than in the measured rhythms and cadences of Tranter's prose.... The Legacy is so accomplished, it's difficult to believe it's a first novel... It demands your full attention and only reluctantly releases you from its clutches to go about your daily life. It's the kind of novel that makes you wish for a mildly debilitating illness to keep you in bed for a couple of days.” —The Australian Literary Review
"Full of suave and stunning evocations of Sydney and Manhattan, this sparkling and spacious novel captures the smell and sap of young people half in love with everyone they’re vividly aware of, and groping to find themselves like the answer to an erotic enigma." - The Monthly (Australia)
This information about The Legacy 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.
Kirsten Tranter grew up in Sydney and studied English and Fine Arts at the University of Sydney. She lived in New York between 1998 and 2006, where she completed a PhD in English on Renaissance poetry at Rutgers University. She now lives in Sydney with her husband and son and is working on a second novel.
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