WINNER OF THE WRITERS’ GUILD FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2020

ELLE ONES TO WATCH 2019

‘Not since Holden Caulfield have I been so captivated by a first-person voice as the one Season Butler creates in Cygnet‘ Blake Morrison

‘A bright new voice in literature’ Bernardine Evaristo

‘Terribly moving’ China Miéville

‘A beautiful book, a meander through the fluid anxiety of youth’ Uzodinma Iweala

‘[A] potent debut . . . A strange, promising beginning’ Observer

The Kid doesn’t know where her parents are. They left with a promise to come back months ago, and now their seventeen-year-old daughter is stranded on Swan Island.

Swan isn’t just any island; it’s home to an eccentric old age separatist community who have shunned life on the mainland for a haven which is rapidly sinking into the ocean. The Kid’s arrival threatens to burst the idyllic bubble that the elderly residents have so carefully constructed – an unwelcome reminder of the life they left behind, and one they want rid of.

Cygnet is the story of a young woman battling against the thrashing waves of loneliness and depression, and how she learns to find hope, laughter and her own voice in a world that’s crumbling around her.