Open Up

**AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER NOW** A GRANTA BEST YOUNG BRITISH NOVELIST 2023 The new collection from a literary star - five achingly tender, innovative and dazzling stories of (dis)connection. He needs her to believe that he adores her, and he needs her to know that he's on the verge of something. He knows that she can't see it yet, but he can feel it. He wants to trust it, wants to stop fighting it. Because beneath all the pretending, deep down in the soil, something is asking, pleading, pushing through. From a child attending his first football match, buoyed by secret magic, and a wincingly humane portrait of adolescence, to the perplexity of grief and loss through the eyes of a seahorse, Thomas Morris seeks to find grace, hope and benevolence in the churning tumult of self-discovery. Philosophically acute and strikingly original, this outstanding suite of stories is bursting with a bracing emotional depth. Open Up cracks the heart as it expands the short story form. Praise for We Don't Know What We're Doing: 'Heart-hurtingly acute, laugh-out-loud funny, and one of the most satisfying collections I've read for years.' ALI SMITH, Guardian 'Books of the Year' 'Masterly. . . marvellous grace and wit.' PHILIP HENSHER 'That tonic gift, the sense of truth - the sense of transparency that permits us to see imaginary lives more clearly than we see our own'. The tonic comes in large doses in Thomas Morris's debut short-story collection.' Irish Times 'Morris's fresh, direct writing style feels brand new.' Metro 'Radiant' Independent