No Season but the Summer

<p><strong>What happens when our oldest stories fail us? When all the rules have changed? The classic myth of Persephone — reimagined for a modern-day reader.</strong></p><p>Persephone spends six months under the ground with her husband king of the dead and six months on earth with her mother goddess of the harvest. It has been this way for nine thousand years. But when she emerges this spring something is different. Rains lash the land crops grow out of season or not at all there are people trying to build a road through the woods and her mother does not seem able to stop them. The natural world is changing rapidly and even the gods have lost control. While Demeter tries to regain her powers and fend off her daughter’s husband who wants to drag his queen back underground for good Persephone finally gets a taste of freedom. But what will this mean for her mother her husband and for the new shoots of life inside her?</p> <ul><li>Following a highly successful hardback publication this will be our lead paperback for the season with outdoor advertising sales promotions special packs and events for book clubs POS and a renewed festivals push.</li><li>A retelling of the Persephone myth in light of climate change; a sumptuous novel about mothers daughters and finding your own agency; for readers of Madeleine Miller Rumaan Alam and Scribe’s own Michael Christie.</li></ul> <p>‘Matilda Leyser’s novel takes the eternal polarities — love and hate life and death summer and winter possibility and impossibility — and brings them crashing together in a tumultuous story of gods living alongside humanity mother-daughter love and loss and a glimmer of hope despite it all. In <em>No Season but the Summer</em> our world is still dying but it is putting up a hell of a fight as it does so reminding us that we can fight too and that fighting for our lives might start with listening to the earth.’</p> <p>‘What a wonderful writer. Matilda Leyser’s work is precise poetic hard-edged rhythmical. It seethes with life and feels both ancient and brand new.’</p> <p>‘Matilda Leyser’s mythic characters are gods and humans all at once; her tale of love and destruction is fuelled by ancient power and rich with contemporary resonance. And what beautiful writing! This striking novel conjures our deepest emotions — our feelings for each other for the imperilled planet that is our only home. <em>No Season but the Summer</em> is a memorable debut.’</p> <p>‘This novel did all of the things that I wish mythic reimaginings would do ... This one is heartily recommended. It’s masterfully constructed moving and strange in all the right ways. It’s carefully and poetically written ... There are very few writers who have succeeded in bringing an ancient myth into the contemporary world with such profound resonance for the issues which concern us. Matilda Leyser is one of them and I’m very much looking forward to what she might do next.’</p> <p>‘As you climb to earth with Persephone you know you are in good hands. Leyser has an uncanny ability to make the mythic intimate and the timeless timely. She takes an ancient tale of goddesses and furious wrongs and fashions it into a passionate contemporary story that will resonate with mothers and daughters everywhere. Oh — and she writes like an angel. Her prose at once precise and lush you can taste and smell and touch every bit of her thrilling sensuous world. <em>No Season but the Summer</em> is an everyday epic with an invitation to ride.’</p> <p>‘Artfully transporting classic myth to the present this is the tale of Persephone of the stories behind why our seasons change and “how climate change is stretching and breaking the rules that have long kept the natural world in rhythm”.’</p> <p>‘<em >No Season But The Summer </em>is strongest when it uses the conflict between immortality and decay to make us think about the climate crisis.’ </p> <p>‘A breathtaking debut novel.’</p> <p>‘This is the retelling I've been looking for — it is excellent.’</p> <p>‘[A] thought provoking and moving read which brought the stories of the ancient Greek Gods into the modern day.’</p>