ROBINSON, Sophie
Prairie Oyster

Everything falls into place: she will get sober, she will eat well, she will start sleeping properly, she will work hard, she will resurrect her career, she will make The Lakes, she will charm Mitch, she will be somebody

Pearl is a thirty-something filmmaker balanced precariously on the edge of an addiction-fuelled breakdown. When lesbian cult filmmaker Mitch Meyer shows an interest in her work about silver screen star Veronica Lake, Pearl’s stilted life is given new meaning and she swaps alcoholism for romantic obsession; London for a summer in New York with Mitch.

Prairie Oyster is a novel of queer longing, artistic fixation and the consequences of indulging our deepest desires. Poetic and moving, it explores the choices we make that we don’t admit to ourselves, the people we make them for, and the struggle to hang on to yourself when the whole world is spinning out of control.

[publishers’ note]

Published by Little Brown & Company, 2026
Literature