The Burgess Boys

Elizabeth Strout

Haunted by the freak accident that killed their father when they were children, Jim and Bob Burgess escaped from their Maine hometown of Shirley Falls for New York City as soon as they possibly could.

Jim, a sleek, successful corporate lawyer, has belittled his bighearted brother their whole lives, and Bob, a legal aid attorney who idolises Jim, has always taken it in his stride.

But their long-standing dynamic is upended when their sister, Susan – the sibling who stayed behind – urgently calls them home. Her lonely teenage son, Zach, has landed himself into a world of trouble, and Susan desperately needs their help. And so the Burgess brothers return to the landscape of their childhood, where the long-buried tensions that have shaped and shadowed their relationship begin to surface in unexpected ways that will change them forever.

2014 Shortlist

A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing - 2014 Winner

Eimear McBride

Americanah

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Burial Rites

Hannah Kent

The Undertaking

Audrey Magee

The Goldfinch

Donna Tartt

The Lowland

Jhumpa Lahiri

2014 Longlist

All the Birds, Singing

Evie Wyld

The Burgess Boys

Elizabeth Strout

Still Life with Bread Crumbs

Anna Quindlen

Almost English

Charlotte Mendelson

The Flamethrowers

Rachel Kushner

The Signature of All Things

Elizabeth Gilbert

Reasons She Goes to the Woods

Deborah Kay Davies

The Luminaries

Eleanor Catton

The Strangler Vine

M. J. Carter

A Girl is a Half-Formed Thing - 2014 Winner

Eimear McBride