Highway Blue

In Highway Blue, the richness and pathos of the ordinary is heightened by the private mysteries of McFarlane's innocent fugitives as they run from both the law and themselves. It is a harrowing journey, but one filled with unexpected kindnesses and the illuminating effect of transformation. I so admire it.

Susanna Moore, author of IN THE CUT

If one of America's many complicated attributes is its ability to let whole lives pass without being seen, Ailsa McFarlane reminds us that language can bring these same lives into stark and penetrating relief. Highway Blue is a road novel, a love story, a coming of age, but with sentences so sharply wrought, characters so achingly precise, that it feels new and fresh and utterly alive.

Lynn Steger Strong, author of WANT

Ailsa McFarlane's prose combines the razor sharp truth telling of Ottessa Moshfegh with the troubled heart of Raymond Carver, using plain language to conjure a shockingly intense way of seeing. I've never read anything quite like it.

Emma Copley Eisenberg, author of THE THIRD RAINBOW GIRL

I loved Highway Blue - a dark, glimmering, journey deep into modern America on a knife edge between love and dependence.

Rosie Price, author of WHAT RED WAS

Hypnotic, stylish, cinematic: Highway Blue holds you captive like a blues song or incantation.

Olivia Sudjic, author of ASYLUM ROAD

Poignant, moving, and cinematic, this is a story imbued with love and loss that feels at once distantly dreamlike and vividly recognisable.

An Yu, author of BRAISED PORK

Highway Blue is a beautiful, inspired rendering of the on-the-road journey. At its core is an unforgettable protagonist in Anne Marie. McFarlane has written an irresistible story of love and life's meanderings. A very gifted writer, I was entranced.

Elaine Feeney, author of AS YOU WERE

McFarlane deftly pulls the strings of her cinematic plot, making sure it never descends into melodrama. Instead, the story remains gripping, yet thought-provoking - a poignant comment on the modern condition.

Stylist

Highway Blue is a beautiful, sun-drenched road novel... A novel that's in love with the idea of America, both contemporary in its concerns and deeply nostalgic

Observer