Signs for Lost Children - by Sarah Moss (Paperback)

About the Book

Only weeks into their marriage a young couple embark[s] on a six-month period of separation. Tom Cavendish goes to Japan to build lighthouses and his wife Ally, a doctor, takes work at the Truro asylum where she must struggle against the terrible conditions imposed on the patients, the mores of late Victorian society and her own demons.

Book Synopsis

In Victorian Cornwall, a doctor risks her marriage to fight for female asylum patients: "One of the most memorable heroines of recent fiction " (The Times, London).

Shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize for Historical Fiction

Ally Moberley, a recently qualified doctor, never expected to marry until she met architect Tom Cavendish. But only weeks into their marriage, Tom sets out for Japan, leaving Ally as she begins work at the Truro Asylum in Cornwall.
Horrified by the brutal attitudes of male doctors and nurses toward their female patients, Ally plunges into the institutional politics of women's mental health at a time when madness is only just being imagined as treatable. She has to contend with a longstanding tradition of permanently institutionalizing women who are deemed difficult, all the while fighting to be taken seriously in a profession dominated by men.
Meanwhile, Tom is overseeing the building of lighthouses, and has a commission from a wealthy collector to bring back embroideries and woodwork. As he travels Japan in search of these enchanting objects, he begins to question the value of the life he left in England. As Ally becomes increasingly absorbed in the moral importance of her work, and Tom pursues his interests on the other side of the world, they will return to each other as different people.
From the blustery coast of Western England to the landscape of Japan, Signs for Lost Children offers a "fine exploration of marriage and the complex minds of 'lost children'--that is, all of us" (The New York Times Book Review).

"Compelling . . . A quietly devastating portrait of the way identity crumbles when you've nothing, or no one, to pin it to."--The Guardian

Review Quotes

Praise for Signs for Lost Children

"Matching exceptionally fine prose with pinpoint sensitivity, British novelist Moss (Bodies of Light, 2014, etc.) delivers a thoughtful account of one intelligent, sometimes-fragile woman's response to a dark, dynamic era."
--Kirkus Reviews

"The richness of Moss's work is astonishing. Few writers demonstrate such quietly magisterial command of the rocky territories of both the heart and mind."
--The Independent

"We have in Ally one of the most memorable heroines of recent fiction. If there's one author to take a chance on this year, let it be [Sarah Moss]."
--The Times

"In this fine exploration of marriage and the complex minds of 'lost children'--that is, all of us--Moss mines and aassesses a union of gifted individuals who follow their paths with great determination, unaware that their hearts will surely be changed in the process."
--The New York Times Book Review

"A compelling, often harrowing, occasionally heartbreaking read. A quietly devastating portrait of the way identity crumbles when you've nothing, or no one, to pin it to."
--The Guardian

"Moss, a writer of complexity, and restraint, shows real skill in the way she brings these 'lost children' back together."
--Financial Times


Praise for "Signs for Lost Children
""The richness of Moss's work is astonishing. Few writers demonstrate such quietly magisterial command of the rocky territories of both the heart and mind."
"The Independent
""We have in Ally one of the most memorable heroines of recent fiction. If there's one author to take a chance on this year, let it be [Sarah Moss]."
"The Times
""A compelling, often harrowing, occasionally heartbreaking read. A quietly devastating portrait of the way identity crumbles when you've nothing, or no one, to pin it to.""
The Guardian
""Moss, a writer of complexity, and restraint, shows real skill in the way she brings these 'lost children' back together."
"Financial Times""

About the Author

Sarah Moss is the award-winning author of three previous novels: Night Waking, selected for the Fiction Uncovered Award in 2011, Names for the Sea: Strangers in Iceland, shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Prize in 2013, and Bodies of Light, shortlisted for the prestigious Wellcome Prize. Signs for Lost Children was shortlisted for the Wellcome Prize and longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. Moss teaches Creative Writing at the University of Warwick in England.