Permanence

By: Sophie Mackintosh

Narrated by: Florence Howard

From one of Granta’s Best Young British Novelists, the critically acclaimed author of the speculative dreamscapes The Water Cure and Blue Ticket, comes the story of a clandestine affair and an alternate city seemingly designed to foster it…

Clara and Francis are in love, but nobody knows it. For months they have been stealing away from their respective lives, leaving no trace of their relationship behind. Their time together is always excruciatingly sweet and all too short. Until one day they wake up in an apartment neither of them recognizes, with no memory of how they got there.

They find themselves in a new, unnamed city, a self-contained sanctuary where adulterers live openly as couples. Here there are fountains and old town squares and perfect cafes with checkered tablecloths. Ripe fruits wait on the counter each morning, invisible threads bind each lover to the other, and their primary responsibility is to enjoy one another. Contact with the real world is impossible and the city’s whims are mysterious—but now those stolen afternoons never have to end.

How much would you sacrifice for a life you never thought possible? And how long can you stay in paradise before the cracks start to show?

An exploration of desire, novelty and choice, Permanence explores the tantalizing quandary of what, if anything, can withstand the daily toll of “forever”?

Critic reviews

"I loved this sensuous, moving, and quietly devastating novel. Sophie Mackintosh’s portrait of a couple in desperate thrall to doomed romance―and her revelations about the dangers and delights of intimacy, of vulnerability’s risks and rewards―will stay with me for a long time." —Monica Heisey, author of Really Good, Actually

"A brilliant parable about desire, infidelity, and devotion." —Erin Somers, author of The Ten Year Affair

"To read Permanence is to feel the exquisite pain and subsuming obsession of an affair—and, more shockingly—its flipside. When the desire to live freely is mysteriously gratified, what then? Mackintosh's signature gifts are in creating a world we've never seen before, and in Permanence, she does this with radiant precision. Gutting and revelatory, it will stay with you long after the last page." —Heidi Sopinka, author of Utopia

"A haunting and seductive novel which pulses with the possibility, or impossibility, of love. The unmet needs and violent hungers of Sophie Mackintosh’s characters do not remain within their bodies but instead fester in the crumbling monuments and shifting landscapes they inhabit. As her readers, we too are pulled into those glimmering psychic fissures" —Avni Doshi, author of Burnt Sugar

"With Permanence, Sophie Mackintosh turns the novel of adultery inside out. This is the perfect imperfect love story: haunting, unsettling, uncanny" —Lauren Elkin, author of Scaffolding

"I adore Sophie Mackintosh’s eerie, ethereal fictions – gorgeous, psychologically fraught fever dreams that linger in the mind for days after reading" ―LitHub

"Like Severance for relationships... Sophie Mackintosh is exactly the writer you want for this kind of uncanny desire experiment" ―Oprah Daily

"Astonishing and unforgettable. Reading Permanence is like dreaming – sensual and atmospheric, vivid and hazy at once. The novel shimmers like a vision or a memory; I loved spending time there" ―Francesca Reece, author of Voyeur

"A devastating twist on the love story; Permanence asks us to examine whether desire can survive in the absence of longing, whether passion can only ever truly grow in the shadows. It is Mackintosh’s best novel yet" ―Keiran Goddard, author of Hourglass

"A truly beautiful book... Sophie Mackintosh offers a nuanced, confronting and original perspective on love and desire. But she also probes fundamental questions about agency and freedom with wry, refreshing intelligence. This book made me think a lot and I also found it very moving. I loved it" ―Rachel Connolly, author of Lazy City