Our Last Year is a book about change; through the internal narration of its two characters, the novel follows the disintegration and renewal of a marriage, in synthesis with a much wider natural reality. It tells a story of damage and destruction, both painful and restorative, and necessary. The trajectory of the novel - of becoming part of the evolutionary process, awake to it, enlivened by it, compassionate towards it - is dramatised through two minds, asking readers to reconsider their relationship with themselves, with others, and with the planet itself.

'A lucid and refreshingly uplifting masterpiece about a fraught period in the life of a married couple, Our Last Year surprised and moved and entranced me, calming and healing me with its wisdom and perspectives.' - Tao Lin

A man and a woman are at a crisis point in their relationship; around them, the natural world is also on the brink of destruction

About the Author
Alan Rossi's fiction has appeared in Granta, The Missouri Review, The New England Review, and many other journals. His novella Did You Really Just Say That To Me? was awarded the third annual New England Review Award for Emerging Writers. His fiction has also won a Pushcart Prize and an O. Henry Prize. His first novel, Mountain Road, Late at Night, was publish by Picador in 2020.

Reviews

'Mountain Road, Late at Night is a wondrous thing and deserves to win prizes. [...] This novel is a difficult read in all the right senses: emotionally devastating, morally ambiguous, with questions left unanswered and no ideal solutions on offer. Nicholas's section in particular is devastating [...] an extraordinary achievement, and whilst it is a difficult book to come to terms with it is absolutely not a difficult book to read. Rossi's narrative burns off the page - I kept thinking of it as a stream of lights, of cat's eyes, illuminating each new stretch of the road it travels, offering partial but transformative glimpses of what is to come. There are times you read a book and think: this writer loves and reveres the written word. This was one of those times for me. The imagery, the thought process, the densely articulated emotion, the lack of sentimentality, the heartfelt compassion and depth of empathy - these are the effects and attributes of Rossi's writing and you will find this novel, slim though it is, circumscribed though it is in terms of its canvas and cast of characters, impossible to forget.' Nina Allan, author of The Dollmaker and The Rift on Moutain Road, Late At Night

'I was really moved by this extraordinary stream of consciousness accessing the deepest layers of four flawed people facing an unimaginably terrible situation. Compassionate and profound, this is the kind of novel that puts even difficult things into perspective.' Isobel Costello, Literary Sofa on Mountain Road, Late At Night

'A minor miracle: a Buddhist instruction manual that is also a deeply compelling novel.' David Shields, author of Reality Hunger on Mountain Road, Late At Night

'An enormously engaging novel. We don't so much read it as live it with these troubled characters and the child, Jack, robbed of his parents by the shocking car crash on a lonely mountain road. This is a complex, deeply moving novel, given completely to the interrogation of its witnesses. An extraordinary debut for an extraordinary new talent.' Frederick Barthelme, author of There Must Be Some Mistake on Mountain Road, Late At Night

Book Information
ISBN 9781913513269
Author Alan Rossi
Format Paperback
Imprint Prototype Publishing Ltd.
Publisher Prototype Publishing Ltd.