Gaining Ground - by Joan Barfoot (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A Lit Hub and Observer "Need to Read" Novel of the Summer

"It will stay with me for the rest of my days. A life-changing book" --Samantha Harvey, author of Orbital

Unearthed after half a century, this radical portrait of a woman who leaves her family to live alone in a woodland cabin will pierce the heart of anybody who has ever wanted to escape.

I swear I loved them all, and I did the best I could. And then I left them, left all of it.

Abra is a wife and mother living a suburban dream--until one day, she walks away. In a woodland cabin, her new life alone begins. There are no mirrors, no clocks, no memories: just the squirrels breathing in the forest, and the silence of vegetables growing. Years later, a young woman arrives, and the past-flashes begin. Daughter? A strange word. Is this her? And what will this mean?

Gaining Ground, originally published as Abra in North America, is a both a radical meditation on living on your own terms and an exquisite work of art. It calls to anybody who has ever wanted to escape--who has asked what it costs to be wild, to be sane, to be free.

Review Quotes

"This is a propulsive meditation on what we want and why we want it...I couldn't put it down."--Emily Temple, Literary Hub

"A wonderful slow burn of a book and Barfoot's originality and control remain exciting, nearly half a century on. It is great to see this reissue put the novel at the centre of things, where it belongs."--Anne Enright, The Guardian

"Brilliantly unsettling....I can't remember the last novel that made me sit so uncomfortably with conflicting emotions--or admire it more for refusing to resolve them."--Johanna Thomas-Corr, The Times (UK)

"Gaining Ground has been a feminist cult classic since 1978. Devoured by me as a teenager in the 1980s and now exuberantly revived by Faber, Joan Barfoot's story of a woman who leaves husband and children to strike out on her own seems as defiant and relevant today as it ever was."--Catherine Taylor, Times Literary Supplement

"[A] compulsive read... [Barfoot] writes probing and darkly comic books about ordinary people being pushed to their extremes."--Alice Vincent, The Observer

"An intricately, perfectly mapped journey into self-liberation. It ventures the question: how to live with, rather than against, oneself - an enormous, shimmering question that now lives inside me. I think it will for the rest of my days." --Samantha Harvey, author of Orbital

"Absolutely stunning. One of the great novels of the twentieth century, I think, and profoundly relevant to the present. It felt like liberation, meeting Abra. And I will pack her into my heart moving forward, she has much to teach us!" --Max Porter, author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers

"A haunting book, with an outstanding sense of place and inner space: unsettling as well as memorable."--Margaret Drabble, author of The Seven Sisters

"A modern masterpiece: proactive, radical and deeply moving on motherhood and how we choose to build our lives."--Doireann ní Ghríofa, author of A Ghost in the Throat

"A joyful and generative novel about running away to make a true home for a true self."--Sarah Moss, author of Ghost Wall

"A searing reminder of what we owe to ourselves."--Saba Sams, author of Gunk

"If you want to pick a fight with yourself, pick this book. This is what the best writing does: makes you think, makes you think again, makes you think better."--Claire Kilroy, author of Solider Sailor

"One of those rare books which put you in touch with yourself as deftly and as deeply as The Bell Jar."--Nell Dunn, author of The Muse

"The sheer brilliance of Barfoot's writing is enough to take your breath away. She is among the best prose stylists of her generation."--A Reader's Guide to the Canadian Novel

"Thousands of women will recognise a sister."--Good Housekeeping

"A formidable frontispiece for second-wave feminism and a wildly original novel. I've never read a book so authentically frightening, so rationally subversive and so intuitively exposing."--Sarah Hall, author of Helm

"Thought-provoking and complex, but also full of moments of beauty and peace. It veers deftly between the beauty of the seasons and the hollowing despair of a stifled existence. Abra's dilemma electrified me. An extraordinary novel."--Katherine May, author of The Electricity of Every Living Thing: a Woman's Walk In the Wild to Find Her Way Home

"Beneath its glassy surface, the currents of this book are vast and dark and dangerous. Weeks after finishing it, I still feel caught in the vortex of its desperately sad - and sadly still relevant - oppositions; still hear the silent howl of its inarticulable pain."--Lucy Caldwell, author of Devotions

"I was gripped by this radical, deeply felt novel, finding myself increasingly immersed and moved by its fresh, insistent narrative of loss and becoming. I know this book will have a new life of being discussed, recommended and passed from friend to friend."--Megan Hunter, author of Days of Light

About the Author

Joan Barfoot (born 1946) is the author of eleven novels. Her books, which reviewers have celebrated as "harrowing and hilarious" and "gloriously subversive", have been longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. A recipient of the Marian Engel Award, she has also been a journalist during much of her career. She lives in London, Ontario, Canada.