Only Children

Welcome to Dully-by-the-Sea. The water is warm, trash kids haunt the boardwalk, and one wayward young man asks the question on everyone’s mind: What is love??

After a violent incident involving his father, eighteen-year-old Simon Mallory has been sentenced to six months of court-ordered exile in Dully-by-the-Sea. Left restless and alone in the luxury apartment his mother has rented for him, he spends his days observing strangers, making prank phone calls, and searching for a way to alleviate an emptiness he cannot name.

His only regular human contact is his social worker. Patricia Harmon is also adrift, trapped in the aftermath of a reckless entanglement with a former client, a relationship she sees through the distorting lens of romantic love. When mysterious messages begin appearing on her answering machine—messages of heartache, longing, and forgiveness—they appear to offer her a lifeline. But as the long hot summer unfolds, the residents of Dully-by-the-Sea must confront the possibility that love may not be as redemptive as theyd hoped.

Only Children is Ottessa Moshfegh at her most tender and devastating: a novel about the seductions of love, the consolations of fantasy, and the terrible cost of mistaking one for the other.