Most, The

A warm Sunday in November 1957. As Sputnik 2 orbits the earth, carrying Laika, the doomed Soviet dog, a couple begin their day.

Virgil Beckett, an insurance salesman, isn't particularly happy in his job but he fulfils the role, playing golf with the partners, drinking in the bar, chasing the women. Kathleen Beckett, once a promising tennis champion, with a key shot up her sleeve called 'The Most', is now a mother and homemaker.

Somehow these two, who have been together since college, have fallen into the roles expected of them - the prescribed suburban dream they have been sold as something to covet, something that will fulfil their lives. But on this unseasonably warm, early November Sunday, Kathleen wakes up and decides that she will not be accompanying her family to church.

No, she feels like a swim.

She unearths her old, red bathing suit and descends into the apartment complex pool no other resident uses. And she doesn't want to come out...

Review: Clever, moving and unexpected. A brilliantly deft and subtle story. * Emma Healey, author of Elizabeth is Missing *
Delivers on page-turning interior secrets * Observer *
In just 144 pages Anthony manages to convey the stifling atmosphere for women in the 1950s through the simple story of a housewife who chooses not to go to church that day and instead spends all her time in an unloved swimming pool, which she refuses to leave. * Cosmopolitan, 'Best Novella of 2024' *
Sensational ... Readers won't want to put this down. * Publishers Weekly *
A fascinating, elegant read where not a single word is wasted * My Weekly *
With this seemingly small act of female rebellion, novelist Jessica Anthony leads us into the secret upheaval of marriage, good-girl American society, and a silenced female fury and ambition. Get ready, readers. The Most is an exquisitely written, heady rush of story. * OPRAH DAILY *
Jessica Anthony's The Most is a brilliant and startling domestic fable of longing... The Most is a novel of ruthless beauty. I read it in one perfect sitting. * Isle McElroy, author of People Collide *
One of the most inventive writers working today * Richard Russo, author of Empire Falls *
Jessica Anthony's spare, elegant novella... is darkly funny in its own way, and in the end is less a comedy than a smoldering, Cheeveresque mediation on mid-century, middle-class disappointment. * Washington Post *
An exquisite, taut literary mousetrap * Alissa Nutting, author of Made for Love *



Author Biography: Jessica Anthony is the author of The Convalescent, Chopsticks, and Enter the Aardvark. Anthony's novels have been published in over a dozen countries, and are featured in Time, Newsweek, Esquire, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times Book Review as an Editors' Choice. She is the recipient of the Creative Capital Award in Literature and has been awarded fellowships from the Bogliasco Foundation and the Bridge Guard Foundation. She lives in Maine, USA.