The book
Andrew Miller's The Crossing is a fascinating modern tale of a brave and uncompromising woman's attempt to seize control of her life and fate.
Who else has entered Tim's life the way Maud did? This girl who fell past him, lay seemingly dead on the ground, then stood and walked. That was where it all began. He wants her—wants to rescue her, to reach her. Yet there is nothing to suggest Maud has any need of him, that she is not already complete. A woman with a talent for survival, who works long hours and loves to sail—preferably on her own.
When Maud finds her unfulfilling marriage tested to the breaking point by unspeakbale tragedy, she attempts an escape from her husband and the hypocrisies of society. In her quest she will encounter the impossible and push her mind and body to their limit.
A wise and thrilling portrait of an irreducible heroine who asks no permission and begs no pardon, the book will resonate with sophisticated female readers, of whom there are many. Those who read and adored the Ferrante stories will find in The Crossing a truth that's absent from most contemporary literature.
The author
Andrew Miller
Andrew Miller’s first novel, Ingenious Pain, was published by Sceptre in 1997; it won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Grinzane Cavour Prize for the best foreign novel published in Italy. It has been followed by Casanova, Oxygen, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and the Whitbread Novel of the Year Award in 2001, The Optimists, One Morning Like a Bird, Pure, which won the Costa Book of the Year Award in 2011, The Crossing, Now We Shall Be Entirely Free, The Slowworm’s Song and The Land in Winter, which won the Winston Graham Historical Prize and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction in 2025. Andrew Miller’s novels have been published in translation in twenty countries. Born in Bristol in 1960, he currently lives in Somerset.
Press
- May 15 2017
"...an adventure story with existential overtones."
— The New Yorker - Feb 15 2017
Exceptionally fine storytelling
— Library Journal - Jan 27 2017
“...this subtle novel... derives enormous power from small details..."
— Shelf Awareness - Jan 25 2017
A Novel’s Strong, Silent Heroine Abandons Her Family for the Sea
— New York Times Book Review - Nov 15 2016
"Mysterious and meditative, this novel notably displays one woman’s resilience."
— Booklist - Oct 5 2016
"The fantastic voyage of a haunted woman."
— Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)