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Will and Attention

A memoir of addiction and recovery from award-winning writer
By Meghan O'Gieblyn
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Brief Description
Mesmerizing Claire Vaye Watkins, author of I Love You but I've Chosen Darkness Staggering Keiran Goddard, author of I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning Profound Chloe Benjamin, author of Under Story In her late thirties, Meghan O'Gieblyn found herself in crisis. Earlier that year, she had... Read More
Format: Paperback / softback
$3999
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Releases 13th October 2026 (Approx. Date) Pre-order  "Will and Attention" now to secure your copy from our first shipment

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From an award-winning American writer never published in the UK before, a luminous memoir of secret drinking, fragile recovery, and the deep pull of religion

Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

Mesmerizing Claire Vaye Watkins, author of I Love You but I've Chosen Darkness

Staggering Keiran Goddard, author of I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning

Profound Chloe Benjamin, author of Under Story

In her late thirties, Meghan O'Gieblyn found herself in crisis. Earlier that year, she had relapsed back into an alcohol addiction she had kicked in her twenties. The year before that, she had been briefly drawn back to the faith she had renounced decades earlier, through a friendship she developed with a Catholic priest.

Both of these events happened in secret, hidden from everyone close to her, and both felt like acts of regression - a return to paths she had walked before. This fundamentally unsettled her belief that she was a unified self with transparent motives. How is a person to avoid those irrational mistakes that they continually return to, despite knowing they are harmful? Can we truly master our will, or are we always divided selves? And can we ever satisfy the deep yearning our compulsions speak to?

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780349149424

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Format: Paperback / softback

Date Published: 08 October 2026

Country: United Kingdom

Imprint: Abacus

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 22.0mm

Width: 135.0mm

Height: 216.0mm

Weight: 0g

Pages: 288

Collections

Biography & Memoir Meghan O'Gieblyn Non-Fiction Non-Fiction Pre-Orders Pre-order Biographies Pre-order Books Pre-orders Pre-orders by Release Date

About the Author

Meghan O'Gieblyn's writing has appeared in Harper's Magazine, the New Yorker, n+1, The Point, the Baffler, Wired, the New York Review of Books, the Guardian, The New York Times and other publications. Her first book, Interior States, won the 2018 Believer Book Award for nonfiction, and her second, God, Human, Animal, Machine was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in Science & Technology.

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