A WASHINGTON SQUARE PRESS P APERBACK ORIGINAL THEY WERE ORIGINALLY FIVE.
Elliot. Brian. Tallis. Cameron. And Dylan—charismatic Dylan—the mediator, the man each one turned to in a time of crisis. Five close friends, bonded in college, still coming together for their annual trip to Las Vegas. This year they are four. Four friends, sharing a common loss: Dylan’s tragic death. A common loss that, upon their arrival in Vegas, will bring with it a common threat: one that will make them question who their departed friend really was, and whether he was ever worthy of their grief.
“Brimming with blackmail and deception” and “laced with simmering emotional tension” (Australian Bookseller & Publisher), A Common Loss is a hypnotic tale from an exciting new voice in literary fiction.
"A Common Loss is a potent story of secrets, love, friendship, and the bonds that keep people close and is brimming with blackmail and deception and laced with grief, poetry, simmering emotional tension, and relationships both budding and exhausted." —Australian Bookseller & Publisher (Top Pick)
“Kirsten Tranter is another emerging Australian novelist to have successfully exploded the myth of the Difficult Second Novel. The Legacy, published in 2009, was that rarest of birds, a bestselling literary fiction. The thriller elements of its narrative were coolly braided with a revisiting of Henry James’ The Portrait of a Lady. Her new novel is even better. A Common Loss takes its epigraph from Tennyson’s In Memoriam, and what follows is a contemporary anatomy of grief, played out between four friends in the wake of a fatal accident, that tightens around the reader like a vice. Tranter makes most other psychological thrillers seem simple-minded.” —The Australian
“Tranter deftly explores a friendship that’s past its prime.” —Kirkus Reviews
“An intimate character study of friendship and deceit set against the American paean to false appearances.” —Publishers Weekly
