Gaining Ground

A Lit Hub "Need to Read" Novel of the Summer

Unearthed after half a century, this radical portrait of a woman who leaves her family to live alone in a woodland cabin will pierce the heart of anybody who has ever wanted to escape.

"An intricately, perfectly mapped journey into self-liberation. It ventures the question: how to live with, rather than against, oneself - an enormous, shimmering question that now lives inside me. I think it will for the rest of my days." --Samantha Harvey, author of Orbital

"A modern masterpiece: proactive, radical and deeply moving on motherhood and how we choose to build our lives."--Doireann ní Ghríofa, author of A Ghost in the Throat

"This is a propulsive meditation on what we want and why we want it...I couldn't put it down.--Emily Temple, Literary Hub

I swear I loved them all, and I did the best I could. And then I left them, left all of it.

Abra is a wife and mother living a suburban dream--until one day, she walks away. In a woodland cabin, her new life alone begins. There are no mirrors, no clocks, no memories: just the squirrels breathing in the forest, and the silence of vegetables growing. Years later, a young woman arrives, and the past-flashes begin. Daughter? A strange word. Is this her? And what will this mean?

Gaining Ground, originally published as Abra in North America, is a both a radical meditation on living on your own terms and an exquisite work of art. It calls to anybody who has ever wanted to escape--who has asked what it costs to be wild, to be sane, to be free.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 08/25/2026
ISBN: 9780571399888
Pages: 208