‘The best thing you'll read this year’ KILEY REID
‘So beautiful’ SARAH JESSICA PARKER
‘One of those books I will read again and again’ JOJO MOYES
‘Very funny, very touching’ DAVID NICHOLLS
‘Moving, absorbing, evocative’ SARA COLLINS
‘Wonderful ... Compelling ... Very funny’ MARINA HYDE
‘I devoured it…. Exquisitely written, poignant and funny’ FEARNE COTTON


A crackling, comical, tender, and highly original novel about mental health, the certainties of medicine, buried trauma, love, death and time lost in the crushing – and comical – hopes of modern life

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Vita Woods is on the brink. She has a good job and a successful doctor boyfriend, Max, with whom the sex is great and the chat sufficient; a vivacious and charming sister Gracie, her verbal sparring partner and best friend for life; and she’s even got a goldfish called Whitney Houston, who brightens her days by showing her she's not the only one going round in circles.

Because it’s the days that are Vita’s problem. Vita is not leaving the house. In fact, Vita rarely exits the basement apartment where she lives, since Vita is in “The Pit” – a place of deep exhaustion and semi-consciousness where she spends much of her time, dead to the world and to herself. She has been sick for months, with an illness that no doctor, not even Max, can medically diagnose.

One day an unexpected courier delivery forces Vita upstairs, into the light - and into a chance encounter with her neighbours upstairs. Suddenly, Vita finds herself faced with an even trickier dilemma. She likes her new friends; she’ll even sneak upstairs to see them while Max is out, against all medical advice but something about her “condition” is nagging at the borders of her mind. After all, what is a house-bound girl to do when she can’t keep the light, her new friendships, or - worst of all - her memories out? The problem might be Vita herself but as far as anyone can prove... there’s nothing wrong with her.

‘Encompasses so many things: a whole life - sorrows, damage, hopes' RICHARD CURTIS
'Surreal, magical, totally original' SATHNAM SANGHERA
'Deep and dark and beautiful' ESTHER FREUD

PRAISE FOR KATE WEINBERG AND THE TRUANTS

'One of the standout books of the summer' Stylist
'Magical in every way . . . One of the best novels I've ever read' Fearne Cotton
'As much a coming-of-age tale as a murder mystery . . . An impressive debut' The Times