About the Book
Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize & the Orwell Prize for Fiction
A Sunday Times Fiction Book of the Year
'a serious accomplishment' Sunday Times
'vivid and expansive' Sophie Mackintosh
'a lyrical celebration' TLS
'a glorious, poetic feat' Bolu Babalola
This is a novel about two women - Melissa and Catarina.
Catarina is born to a well-known political family in Brazil. Melissa, a South London native, is brought up by her mum and a crew of rebellious grandmothers. In 2016, they meet for the first time.
Their story takes us across continents and generations. In it we see sisterhood and queerness, and, perhaps, glimpse a better way to live.
About the Author :
Yara Rodrigues Fowler is a writer from South London. Her first novel, Stubborn Archivist, was longlisted for the Desmond Elliot and Dylan Thomas Prizes and shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year 2019. there are more things was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2022 and the Goldsmiths Prize 2022. Yara is also a part-time organiser.
Review :
'there are more things is a vivid and expansive novel of sisterhood, love and connection. Reading it is a true experience of joy, and of hope'
'A serious accomplishment from a talented writer with a gloriously untethered style'
there are more things builds on the formal innovation of Yara Rodrigues Fowler's first novel in a blistering collage of revolution, sisterhood and joy. Set between contemporary Britain and Brazil's military dictatorship, this book explores the forces outside of ourselves that bind us together and wrench us apart. Her work is honest about political and personal losses, yet strung with light and hope. She reminds us of the power we hold in our individual bodies and the potency of collective strength. there are more things illuminates the societal structures that ensnare us and captures the exuberance and heartache in longing for a better world
A lyrical celebration, and mourning, of women driven to and empowered by activism and community engagement . . . Yara Rodrigues Fowler depicts agitation and revolution as a combination of personal and shared moments, filled with hope, loss, loneliness and love
Gripping. Yara writes about London like no other and she made me fall in love with the city all over again. A lyrical, relatable and fiercely intelligent tale of first loves, friendships, family and politics told with generosity, skill and compassion.'
typically magnificent from a unique writer
An empowering, lyrical and radical book about friendship, protest movements, community and the power of standing up for what you believe in. Yara once again rips up what we consider to be a novel and pushes the form forward in an exciting and readable way
there are more things is it's own thing. Situated closely and confidently in the idioms of people navigating a politics that feel true and nuanced, with it's own theory of translating experience, intergenerational histories, place and language.There is a wit too to this book that feels like a wink of familiarity in a pub, discussing the next best thing over a sticking counter. In a crisp and astute poetics, Yara makes music of the warm breath between people
there are more things is a book about freedom and solidarity and joy. It will make you yearn for freedom and believe in more and deeper possibilities than you ever thought possible. Yara Rodrigues Fowler brilliantly brings to life lives lived freely and fully. I couldn't put it down
A novel as a stack of polaroids, whose every day moments are saturated with the love, pain and grief women carry across generations and political movements, there are more things is a beautiful, unusual and vital novel, seeking and forging powerful connections across time
An ambitious and important novel from one of the UK's most talented young writers. The book gathers so much into its complex strands, from the nature of exile and uprootedness to friendship it takes us to Brazil and circles us back to the precarity of London living experienced by so many today. It gives us a window into lives so often dismissed and ignored. Fowler's female characters are so sensitively drawn... This is a talented writer who has written something both moving and complex
Written with a painful tenderness, Yara's book pours generously like honey and sticks uncomfortably around questions of home, family, and love. A beautiful and heart aching testament of sisterhood and collectivity, Yara's second novel is a gift to spend time with, a book to tread delicately through
Yara Rodrigues Fowler is an urgently important and captivating voice. there are more things kept me enchanted from the first page
a phenomenal story of two women, revolution, and finding a place in the world. A book of epic scope & intricate detail. Stunning
full of the emancipatory and radical potential of joy
there are more things is an exquisite story of love and revolution, friendship and heartbreak, language and history, beautifully told and so powerfully felt. This is a transportative and captivating novel - I truly felt as though I lived and breathed among its pages and will be thinking about it for a very long time. Yara Rodrigues Fowler is an outstanding writer and this is a truly brilliant literary and political achievement
A stirring portrait of the legacy of violence . . . experimental and evocative . . . While the themes that this novel tackles are harrowing, they are handled with the most delicate and deft touch. Issues like queerness, casual racism, the anxiety of being in a foreign land and the pressure of being grateful for being allowed the same opportunities as a white person are sensitively depicted in Fowler's vivid prose
A large-hearted novel of sisterhood and resistance
Reignited my mind and my passion. It is a glorious, poetic, expansive feat that traverses sisterhood, and love, and revolution and home, and the bravery it takes to question what oppresses
This is a vibrant, sensual, olfactory modern novel that celebrates kinship, food, music, mixed heritage, the rhythms of the city, political and sexual awakenings. Formally experimental, but never forbiddingly so, it is a seductive, propulsive read
A political novel rooted in power and cemented in hope
