A fiercely funny and touching debut novel about a girl with a sharp and mischievous voice of her own – and her quest to discover the truth about her sister's death

'I want to be awful. I want to do awful things and why not? Dull is dull is dull is my life. Like now, it's night, not yet time for bed but too late to be outside, and the two of them reading reading reading with their eyes moving like the lights inside a copy machine. When I was helping put the dishes in the washer tonight, I broke a plate. I said sorry Ma it slipped. But it didn't slip, that's how I am sometimes, and I want to be worse. Awful is easy if you make it your one and only. 'Fear doesn't come naturally to Mathilda Savitch. She prefers to look right at the things nobody else can bring themselves to mention: for example, the fact that her beloved older sister is dead, pushed in front of a train by a man who is still on the loose. Still, after a year of spying and provocations, she's no closer to the truth about her sister's death than the day it happened. When Mathilda finally cracks her email password, a secret life opens up, one that swiftly draws her into a world of clouded motives and strange emotion. Somewhere in it lies the key to waking her family up from their dream of grief. To cross into that underworld and see what her sister saw, she has to risk everything that matters to her. Mathilda Savitch is furiously funny, awkward and tender; a compelling page-turner, and the debut of an extraordinary novelistic talent.

Victor Lodato is the recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships and has won numerous awards for his plays, including an award from the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays. This is his first novel. He lives in Tuscon, Arizona and New York.