A NEW YORK TIMES Notable Book of the yearAlso chosen as a best book of the year by Vogue, Publishers Weekly and Kirkus'Wayward reads like a burning fever dream. A virtuosic, singular and very funny portrait of a woman seeking sanity and purpose in a world gone mad' NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW'***** If there's any justice in the world, Spiotta's firecracker of a novel, Wayward, will bring her the attention she very much deserves' Lucy Scholes, SUNDAY TELEGRAPHSamantha Raymond's life has begun to come apart: her mother is ill, her teenage daughter is increasingly remote, and she finds herself staring into 'the Mids' - hours of supreme wakefulness when women of a certain age contemplate their lives. For Sam, this means motherhood, mortality and the state of an unravelling nation.When Sam falls in love with a decrepit Arts and Crafts house on the wrong side of town, she buys it on a whim and flees her suburban life, attempting to find beauty in the ruins.