An Elder Brother

Michael Betts has made a deliberate art of solitude. The elderly bookseller of Bloomsbury has spent decades building walls between himself and the world, finding comfort in the predictable silence of his second-hand shop. Then a young girl named Margery walks in, asking for a copy of Pilgrim's Progress for herself and her brother. Her simple, guileless request cracks something open in him that he believed had long calcified into stone. As Margery's life is upended by her father's illness and subsequent death, Michael is drawn inexorably toward the messy, painful terrain of human connection. He must confront his estranged brother, his own moral failures, and the hollow victory of a life carefully arranged to feel nothing. This is a quiet, devastating novel about the moments that break us open and whether we have the courage to let them.