Australian Women's Weekly Great Read 'Hannah Bent's outstanding debut is a wise, wondrous celebration of life.' - The Australian 'Hannah Bent has created a literary heroine of such pure beauty she takes your breath away.' - Australian Women's Weekly 'Read it if you like: Your sister, anything by Trent Dalton, having a good cry, and My Sister's Keeper.' - Mamamia Marlowe and Harper share a bond deeper than most sisters, shaped by the loss of their mother in childhood. For Harper, living with what she calls the Up syndrome and gifted with an endless capacity for wonder, Marlowe and she are connected by an invisible thread, like the hum that connects all things. For Marlowe, they are bound by her fierce determination to keep Harper, born with a congenital heart disorder, alive. Now twenty-five, Marlowe is living abroad when she receives the devastating call that Harper's heart is failing and she is being denied a transplant by the medical establishment. Marlowe rushes to her childhood home in Hong Kong to be by Harper's side and soon has to answer the question - what lengths would you go to save your sister? When Things are Alive They Hum poses profound questions about the nature of love and existence, the ways grief changes us, and how we confront the hand fate has dealt us. Intensely moving, exquisitely written and literally humming with wonder, it is a novel that celebrates life in all its guises, and what comes after. PRAISE FOR WHEN THINGS ARE ALIVE THEY HUM'When literature is alive it hums, and rattles and warms and hurts and heals. Hannah Bent and her wondrous Harper and Marlowe have changed the way I've been going about my days. What a gift.' - Trent Dalton, author of Boy Swallows Universe and All Our Shimmering Skies 'A simply beautiful novel.' - Good Reading 'One of the most captivating and memorable books I've read in a long time. Brave, tender and heartfelt, I foresee cheese platters stripped down to the last cracker as bookclubs reflect on this beautiful and thought-provoking novel.' - Joanna Nell, author of The Single Ladies of Jacaranda Retirement Village 'Hannah Bent's novel is compelling and tender, powerfully placing the reader in the heart and the mind of two sisters with contrasting expectations of life, and the imperatives of love. At times this pulls them in dangerously different directions but ultimately their ability to honour the essence of each other reminds us that in doing so, life-giving expansion is possible even when life itself may be diminishing.' - Suzanne Daniel, author of Allegra in Three Parts 'My heart feels larger for reading Hannah Bent's beautiful debut. This is a novel which hums with love, truth and tenderness. I defy readers not to fall in love with Marlowe and Harper.' - Kathryn Heyman, author of Fury
Fiction: general and literary, Family life fiction, Narrative theme: Social issues, Narrative theme: Death - grief - loss
Paperback
Hannah Bent
384 pages
H: 234mm W: 153mm