Kelly Luce’s debut novel available November 1, 2016 from Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Part mystery, part adventure story, part meditation on the darkness we each carry inside, Pull Me Under is the story of a Japanese-American woman who, as a 12-year-old child in Japan, snapped and killed her bully. She starts a new life as an adult in Boulder, Colorado, and tells no one—including her husband or daughter—of her past. Her estranged father is a mythological figure, a virtuoso violinist who is a Living National Treasure in Japan; his death spurs her return to Japan for the first time in twenty years.

  • Wastes no time in grabbing our attention.

    - The New York Times on Pull Me Under

  • I cannot stress enough how magnificent the writing is in the book, and how well Luce breathes a haunting realism into the story so that despair and hope become entwined.

    - Book of the Month Club on Pull Me Under

  • Luce knows how to end her story, and does so satisfyingly... it is similar to the procession of a good, long hike.

    The Chicago Tribune on Pull Me Under

  • A suspense novel with a female protagonist that gets more right about women than so many others I've read in the past few years.

    NPR on Pull Me Under

  • A revelatory family mystery.

    Elle on Pull Me Under

  • ...psychologically complex; it inspires horror, sympathy and even, at times, humor.

    Japan Times on Pull Me Under

  • Luce deftly evokes Japan without exoticizing it...the final act is the novel’s strongest and most confident, weaving the book’s threads together and leaving a lasting reverberation.

    - Publishers Weekly on Pull Me Under

  • Luce's debut will bewitch you.

    - O, the Oprah magazine

  • Pull Me Under is a strange and very appealing novel, a journey to Japan and the primal scene of the main character's self— which, like a volcano, may have already blown its top.

    - Rachel Kushner

  • Pull Me Under is a fierce and suspenseful exploration of the profoundly mysterious nature of identity, written with precise and spectacular beauty. Kelly Luce is one of our most thrilling new talents.

    - Laura van den Berg

  • Kelly Luce’s debut novel is an urgent and wise story about the many disparate identities a life can hold, but it is also an astonishing example of all that a novel can encompass. By turns, Pull Me Under is a finely crafted mystery, a portrait of a fractured family, an evocative travelogue, an aching coming-of-age tale, and an insightful contemplation of our inescapable histories in an increasingly globalized and digitized culture. In this novel, Luce offers many poignant, page-turning pleasures, but her greatest gift to the reader is her revelation of how a single life, a single mind, a single, artful book can contain multitudes.

    - Stefan Merrill Block

  • Kelly Luce's unforgettable debut is an elegant mystery, a tender story of family and forgiveness, an unsettling depiction of the darkness we each carry inside, and a hymn to Japan. Noodle shops, summer festivals, ancient temples, and the lush landscape of rural Shikoku burst to life in these pages. From its first sentence, Pull Me Under grabs the reader and doesn't let go.

    - Sarah Bird, author of Above the East China Sea