Last Things

by Jenny Offill

To eight-year-old Grace Davitt, her mother, Anna, is a puzzling yet wonderful mystery. This is a woman who has seen a sea serpent in the lake, who paints a timeline of the universe on the sewing-room wall, and who teaches her daughter a secret language which only they can speak.

For Grace's father, however, the only truth is science, and increasingly he finds himself shut out by Anna as she draws Grace deeper and deeper into a strange world of myth and obsession.

Paperback

Published January 1, 2000

About the author

Jenny Offill is an American author born in Massachusetts. Her first novel Last Things was published in 1999 was a New York Times Notable book and a finalist for the L.A Times First Book Award.

She is also the co-editor with Elissa Schappell of two anthologies of essays and the author of several children's books She teaches in the MFA programs at Brooklyn College, Columbia University and Queens University.