# Only Children

Canonical: https://www.bookquiver.com/ottessa-moshfegh/only-children/9781787336995

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- Book: [Only Children](https://www.bookquiver.com/ottessa-moshfegh/only-children) ([Only Children.md](https://www.bookquiver.com/ottessa-moshfegh/only-children.md))
- Authors: [Ottessa Moshfegh](https://www.bookquiver.com/ottessa-moshfegh)
- Publisher: Jonathan Cape
- ISBN: 978-17-8733-699-5
- Pages: 320
- Published: 2027-07-22
- Language: en_GB
- Binding: Hardcover

## Description

Greetings from Dully-by-the-Sea. The houses are rotting, the kids are abandoned, and the adults have never grown up. 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 they'd 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.