Named a Wall Street Journal Top 10 Book of 2025
Named a Washington Post Top 10 Fiction Book of 2025
Named a Best Book of the Year by Vulture, Marie Claire and Vanity Fair
"I loved RUTH."—Lorde
‘It would never work out, but I’m in love with Ruth.’—Ron Charles, The Washington Post
‘A wonderful, loving, tenderly teasing and often moving portrait … [a] standout.’—Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal
‘There are inklings of greatness in Kate Riley’s first novel… I suspect it will become an underground classic.’—Dwight Garner, The New York Times
In this mesmerizing and profound novel, the arc of a woman's life in a devout, insular community challenges our deepest assumptions about what infuses life with meaning.
Ruth is raised in a snow globe of Christian communism, a world without private property, television, or tolerance for idle questions. Every morning she braids her hair and wears the same costume, sings the same breakfast song in a family room identical to every other family room in the community; every one of these moments is meant to be a prayer, but to Ruth they remain puzzles. Her life is seen in glimpses through childhood, marriage, and motherhood, as she tries to manage her own perilous curiosity in a community built on holy mystery. Is she happy? Might this in fact be happiness? Ruth immerses us in an experience that challenges our most fervent beliefs.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Named a Washington Post Top 10 Fiction Book of 2025
Named a Best Book of the Year by Vulture, Marie Claire and Vanity Fair
"I loved RUTH."—Lorde
‘It would never work out, but I’m in love with Ruth.’—Ron Charles, The Washington Post
‘A wonderful, loving, tenderly teasing and often moving portrait … [a] standout.’—Sam Sacks, Wall Street Journal
‘There are inklings of greatness in Kate Riley’s first novel… I suspect it will become an underground classic.’—Dwight Garner, The New York Times
In this mesmerizing and profound novel, the arc of a woman's life in a devout, insular community challenges our deepest assumptions about what infuses life with meaning.
Ruth is raised in a snow globe of Christian communism, a world without private property, television, or tolerance for idle questions. Every morning she braids her hair and wears the same costume, sings the same breakfast song in a family room identical to every other family room in the community; every one of these moments is meant to be a prayer, but to Ruth they remain puzzles. Her life is seen in glimpses through childhood, marriage, and motherhood, as she tries to manage her own perilous curiosity in a community built on holy mystery. Is she happy? Might this in fact be happiness? Ruth immerses us in an experience that challenges our most fervent beliefs.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"The serenely weird testament of an unintentional heroine in an intentional community, and an act of novelistic grace that deserves not only cult status but its own religion." - Joshua Cohen
"Irresistibly smart and funny." - Jenny Offill
"A detailed, delicate study of how character is formed by collision with so many sharp corners that they form a perfect circle - how we entrap ourselves in the choices of others, glimpsing freedom in flashes." - Nell Zink
"Irresistibly smart and funny." - Jenny Offill
"A detailed, delicate study of how character is formed by collision with so many sharp corners that they form a perfect circle - how we entrap ourselves in the choices of others, glimpsing freedom in flashes." - Nell Zink
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Used availability for Kate Riley's Ruth