The new #1bestseller from the author of Normal People and Conversations with Friends, now in paperback.

‘The literary phenomenon of the decade.’ – Guardian
‘The best novel published this year.’ – The Times
‘A spellbinding twenty-first-century love story.’ – TLS

Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend Eileen is getting over a break-up and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood.

Alice, Felix, Eileen and Simon are still young – but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they get together, they break apart. They worry about sex and friendship and the world they live in. Are they standing in the last lighted room before the darkness, bearing witness to something? Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?