Granta snaps up Sarah Bernstein’s new Gothic novel
Granta has snapped up Sarah Bernstein’s “incantatory” Gothic novel Poor Baby. UK and Commonwealth rights (excluding Canada) were acquired by Granta associate publishing director Jason Arthur, on exclusive submission from Aitken Alexander Associates’ Harriet Moore.
The novel follows an unnamed narrator and her partner, Emil, who move into Westermoy, a secluded gamekeeper’s cottage deep in the woods, to begin a new life.
The narrator works as a gardener while Emil “oversees an ambitious regeneration”, and it isn’t long before they discover the narrator is pregnant.
The synopsis continues: “But even from the first happy evening of their arrival, there are spaces in Westermoy where she does not like to tread – an anteroom that she passes as quickly as she can, a corner in the raised beds where nothing grows. The gamekeeper watches her as she works in the glasshouses and an old woman, Bernadette, who feels terribly familiar, keeps edging her toe into the door, prying it open, insisting she clean Westermoy, while dispensing advice about the pregnancy and upcoming labour.
“Emil is taken away suddenly by the estate’s owner on business and almost as soon as he leaves, the narrator finds herself besieged by mysterious letters, spectral figures and the uncanny persistence of history.”
Arthur said: “Bernstein’s measured, meticulous prose and unique talent are something very special indeed. Poor Baby is an exceptionally original and impressive work, full of secrets, hauntings and loss. I couldn’t be more pleased to be publishing it on the Granta list.”
Bernstein is a Granta Best of Young British Novelist as well as the Booker prize-shortlisted author of Study for Obedience. Her previous work has also featured in Granta, among other publications.
Poor Baby is set to be published in March 2027.
