Share <Embed>

$10.65

FREE Delivery on first order. Details

Only 1 left in stock.

Ships from and sold by Amazon AU.

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 2 images

Follow the Author

Hannah Pittard

The Fates Will Find Their Way Paperback – 1 April 2012

by Hannah Pittard (Author)

60 ratings

See all formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Amazon Price

New from

Used from

Kindle

"Please retry"

$10.99

—

Hardcover

"Please retry"

$73.21

$73.20

—

Paperback

"Please retry"

$10.65

—

Arrives: 25 - 28 Jan

Fastest delivery: Friday, 22 Jan
Order within 19 hrs and 12 mins

"Sixteen-year-old Nora Lindell is missing. And the neighbourhood boys she's left behind are caught forever in the heady current of her absence. As the days and years pile up, the mystery of her disappearance grows kaleidoscopically. A collection of rumours, divergent suspicions, and tantalising what-ifs, Nora Lindell's story is a shadowy projection of teenage lust, friendship, reverence, and regret, captured magically in the voice of the boys who still long for her. Far more eager to imagine Nora's fate than to scrutinise their own, the boys sleepwalk into an adulthood of jobs, marriages, families, homes and daughters of their own, all the while pining for a girl and a life that no longer exists, except in the imagination."

Frequently bought together

Customers who bought this item also bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

Jeffrey Eugenides
1,106
Paperback
$17.93
Ed Park
23
Paperback
$15.11
Julie Otsuka
1,014
Paperback
$18.09
Hannah Pittard
59
Paperback
$37.60

Start reading The Fates Will Find Their Way on your Kindle in under a minute.

Don't have a Kindle? Get your Kindle here, or download a FREE Kindle Reading App.

Product details

Publisher : WINDMILL BOOKS; 1st edition (1 April 2012)
Language: : English
Paperback : 256 pages
ISBN-10 : 0099537745
ISBN-13 : 978-0099537748
Dimensions : 12.9 x 1.6 x 19.8 cm

Best Sellers Rank: 343,708 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 22,731 in Contemporary Literature & Fiction

Customer Reviews:
60 ratings

Product description

Review

Exceptional... a beautifully crafted portrait of men slipping almost imperceptibly from childhood to middle-age...Combining the wistfulness of Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones with the formal daring of David Vann's Legend of a Suicide, it's hard to imagine a better debut this year. ― Financial Times

Forcibly reminiscent of Jeffrey Eugenides's hit The Virgin Suicides ... this deeply readable novel concerns itself with mysteries that are at once more mundane and more profound - innocence, longing, the winding journey to adulthood. ― Daily Mail

It's hard not to think of The Virgin Suicides when reading this novel...The tone is wistful, lustful, gossipy, guilty ... undoubtedly a writer to watch ― Guardian

A startling piece of work...Pittard powerfully evokes the intense contradictions of adolescence: the capacity to feel dread, boldness, vulnerability, nostalgia and desire in a single instant...It is an unflinching account of the dark undercurrents of youthful sexuality ― Observer

A haunting debut with echoes of The Virgin Suicides...By turn dreamy, regretful and melancholy, the velvety prose explores "what if" territory, offering alternative endings for the missing girl. ― Marie Claire

Book Description

"An extraordinary debut novel - The Virgin Suicides for a new generation"

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

Hannah Pittard
54
Hardcover
$26.86
Hannah Pittard
50
Hardcover
$14.28

Customer reviews

5 star		33%
4 star		18%
3 star		24%
2 star		11%
1 star		15%

How are ratings calculated?

Review this product

Write a customer review

Top reviews from other countries

JuliaC

Original debut novel impresses

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 April 2011

Verified Purchase

This very original debut novel by Hannah Pittard is ostensibly about events in a small town American community following the disappearance of 16 year old year Nora Lindell one Halloween. But it is more about the subsequent lives of those who were close to her, the effect that her disappearance had on them, the imaginings of her friends about what might have happened to her, and their part in the tragedy. It is very well written and gripping in its psychological dissection of the motivations and guilty consciences of the boys who knew her well.

The effect of Nora's absence and the imaginings about what could possibly have happened to her, as well as what subsequently becomes of her younger sister Sissy, become an unhealthy fixation for this circle of men as they progress into adulthood as Nora may not. Pittard writes the story along several cul-de-sacs, depending on which wild imaginings they are mentally constructing. This is a novel but very effective way to build up a narrative.

The book becomes something of a confessional as the young men mature and emotionally come to terms with what happened, or what they think probably happened, to Nora, and muses on the role their friends might have played. They are also forced, through their memories, to confront the reality of their own current relationships, marriages or loneliness, and in some cases all these things. It is clever, beautifully crafted, and very creative. The claustrophobia of the tight knit community oozes from its pages. Pittard, who has previously only written short stories, has now proved herself as an accomplished novelist, and is definitely one to watch.

Jessica Sullivan

“None of us was stupid. We were just dreamers

Reviewed in the United States on 30 August 2016

Verified Purchase

“None of us was stupid. We were just dreamers. Caught in the dream of the Lindells and what might have been.”

There are plenty of books about missing teenagers. That’s certainly nothing new. But typically these narratives are focused on unraveling the mystery of what happened. In The Fates Will Find Their Way, Hannah Pittard takes a different approach: What if we never find out? What then?

When 16-year-old Nora Lindell disappears from her cozy Mid-Atlantic town, the boys who knew and adored her are left reeling — caught forever in the gravity of her absence. Without any concrete answers concerning Nora’s fate, they’re unable to ever find closure. Instead, they speculate on what might have happened to Nora, imagining a series of “what ifs” in the decades that follow.

As the boys become men, they marry and buy homes and have children of their own, but there remains a part of them that never grows up, forever lost in the past, grieving for a girl who no longer exists.

Pittard’s narrative style is both clever and befitting: the entire novel is told in first person plural — the tone haunting and ethereal, much like The Virgin Suicides.

This is the first of Pittard’s three novels, and what’s most interesting to me after having read all of them is how distinct they are. Her range and versatility as a novelist is extremely impressive. My biggest complaint with this one is that with so many characters, it became difficult at times to keep track of them all. I can also see some readers finding the ending anti-climactic, though I was satisfied with the resolution.

This complex, character-driven novel offers a fresh take on the common trope of the missing teenager, filled with plenty of Pittard’s signature psychological insights. Often in life we don’t get the catharsis of finding all the answers; The Fates Will Find Their Way is a meditation on this harsh truth.

2 people found this helpful

Emily Anne

Very different style of writing

Reviewed in the United States on 31 May 2019

Verified Purchase

It took me some time to get into this novel. Had I begun reading at home during the rush of my normal routine, I may not have been able to get over the strangeness. However, I picked it up on vacation when I had little else to do but read. It is not your typical girl gone missing story that focuses on the grim details of an investigation. Instead, it follows the aftermath through the eyes of the boys that knew her. I enjoyed the offshoots of the story where they tried to imagine what might have become of her. I think it's a very realistic take on the subtle trauma that can occur for those on the outskirts of the tragedy. We always focus so much on those directly affected and never really think about the ripple effect. I wish that there had been a little more attention to chronology. The skipping around made it a little difficult to follow. Overall, it was a very unique book that was interesting enough for a week at the beach.

One person found this helpful

Rachel L Kersey

Excellent

Reviewed in the United States on 24 May 2016

Verified Purchase

At first, I didn't like the vagueness of this story because I thought, "But what IS the actual story?" But I grew to love it because it is real life, which somehow echoes the end of the story. Life is a mystery and you often don't know, you just speculate. So I loved it for that!
I would recommend this book to anyone and everyone! I guess if I had to narrow it to a demographic, I would say people like me, 21 year old women and women in their 20s and 30s and 40s. Maybe even 50s.
I gave this book a 5 star rating because for some reason, I couldn't put it down. It was a true page-turner, and not a cheap page-turner. I loved the Hunger Games, but every chapter ends with a cliffhanger that forces you to keep reading, and in retrospect, it seems like a cheap trick. Mrs. Pittard doesn't resort to that. Their is a force or an undercurrent to the story that propels the novel forward. And it is this same current that subtly catches the reader and carries him or her along, regardless of the fact that they need to wake up in the morning at a reasonable hour and do something with their life. I read it in about two days. Great book. I highly recommend it.

3 people found this helpful

Larry Hoffer

Sometimes a loss haunts you for your entire life...

Reviewed in the United States on 10 August 2012

Verified Purchase

This was an odd yet beautifully written book that has worked its way into my mind and really left me thinking. I'm grateful to Rakesh Satyal, one of my Facebook friends (and author of the fabulous Blue Boy), who recommended this book, as I don't know if I would have heard about it otherwise.

One Halloween, 16-year-old Nora Lindell disappears. No one really knows what happened to her, although a group of boys who went to school with her have a number of theories, given random rumors and alleged sightings they've heard about. Much like how the girls' deaths in The Virgin Suicides colored the lives of those around them, Nora's disappearance has the same ripple effect on these boys, shaping how they view, and act in, the future. They imagine different paths that Nora might have taken, and through the years, supposed Nora sightings occur in the most unlikely of places. As these boys become men, their obsession with all things Nora (and, to an extent, her younger sister, Sissy) saves them from being mired completely in the minutia of their own adulthood. For some, Nora's disappearance is a tiny catalyst that sets them on a self-destructive course that might not manifest itself for years; for others, it is the push toward saving themselves.

This isn't just a book about a missing girl; this is a book about how the disappearance of a peer that many lusted after alters the course of lives in a small town. Hannah Pittard weaves an absolutely beautiful narrative thread, and while at times it is difficult to tell all of the characters apart, the story is at once compelling and off-putting. I don't ordinarily like books where the narrator imagines what happens to other characters rather than actually tells what happens, but in Pittard's hands, that exercise worked tremendously. And while I'd like to know what really did happen to Nora, somehow making up my own version of her story is as intriguing for me as it was for the boys. Really excellent book.

4 people found this helpful

See all reviews

Follow the Author

Similar authors to follow

The Fates Will Find Their Way Paperback – 1 April 2012

Frequently bought together

Customers who bought this item also bought

Product details

Product description

Review

Book Description

About the Author

Customers who viewed this item also viewed

Customer reviews

Review this product

Top reviews from Australia

Top reviews from other countries