”Leichter unveils a dazzling narrative about the limitations of time and the heartbreaking realities of grief.” —TIME Magazine
Longlisted for the 2025 Joyce Carol Oates Prize
Finalist for McSweeney’s Gabe Hudson Prize
TIME Magazine Must-Read Books of 2023
LA Times Best Books of 2023
The New Yorker Best Books of 2023
Publishers Weekly Best Books of 2023
Electric Literature 5 Best Novels of 2023
Slate 10 Best Books of 2023
Vulture Best Books of 2023
Lilith Magazine Best Books of 2023
Boston Globe Best Books of 2023
New York Times Editors’ Choice
“A capacious container for our space-related concerns…Part of the pleasure of reading Terrace Story is figuring out how its peculiar architecture works…There’s both something old-fashioned about these flicks of the magic-realist wand—a touch of Kafka, a dusting of García Márquez, even a spoonful of Mary Poppins—and something distinctly of our moment…Leichter is interested in the bewitched space of narrative itself. The fable, with tidy generic conventions but stretchy moral lessons, performs a kind of magic on the novel, giving a slim work legend-like scope.”
—The New Yorker
“Poignant and concise . . . . This story does not so much unfold as expand, mushrooming beyond linear time and space to encompass not just what happens, but everything else that could have, too . . . . Leichter’s fiction leaves you similarly dizzy with longing — for the versions of yourself now beyond reach, for the people you imagined beside you who are no longer.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Terrace Story is about dread and loss and the frustrations of finitude, yet its tone is comic and buoyant, almost obstinately optimistic. Ms. Leichter delights in banter and inside jokes, and she finds absurdity, even when it has a dark, Kafkaesque flavor, unfailingly affecting. 'It was love, to recognize the inventions and inconsistencies that make a person whole,' she writes, and it’s love for the mess of humankind that makes this marvelously motley novel so poignant.” —Wall Street Journal
“Terrace Story is deeply influenced by the shape and feel of the classic fairy tale, shimmering with the kind of simple language and visceral imagery of a Grimm yarn. . . . This slender volume, which comes in at just under 200 pages, keeps cozy, heart-wrenching company with the philosophical fiction of Emily St. John Mandel and the rigorous, fantastical imagination of Ted Chiang.” —The Washington Post
”I’ve heard Terrace Story described as a parable about real estate, which may be true, but come on, people, think bigger. In this palate-expander for narration…The push is about what can grow in the space between the real and the imagined; Leichter has stitched together a narrative that purposely, beautifully, doesn’t quite hang together, one where raw emotion rubs up against fantastical possibility.” —LA Times
“About family, love, loss—it’s pretty gutting throughout—but what gives it presence is the forgone conclusion that it’s all gonna be over soon ... What stands out for me about this section—this novel, really—is how well it depicts joy. Small moments—fleeting and sad in retrospect for the unhappiness they precede—but all the same: wow. It’s a lot easier to write about despair than joy ... So much of this novel—most every sentence—is freighted with subtext and implication. If you rush, you will miss all the wordplay and ideation happening throughout.”
—Bookforum
“The follow-up to Hilary Leichter’s stunningly original debut, Temporary, is a novel as structurally imaginative as it is emotionally expansive. . .this is largely a book about space, from real estate to the distance that can settle in between intimate partners, but it’s also an unsettling meditation on proportion, conservation, and what is lost to get what we want. Recurring motifs and phrases echo throughout; with each encounter, they feel at once familiar and new, like realizing mid-dream that you’ve dreamed about this place before.” —Vulture
”Hilary Leichter’s bountiful Rubik’s cube of a novel. . .continuously shifts the reader’s prior expectations without ever feeling like a gotcha. . . .After spending the whole book reveling in Leichter’s precise language and extraordinary powers of control over the intricate narrative, it reduced me to pure emotion, tears running down my cheeks.” —Vanity Fair
In 2021, Hilary Leichter won a National Magazine Award for a clever story in Harper’s magazine about a young couple, trapped in a tiny city apartment, who discover a magical terrace hidden in their closet. In Terrace Story, Leichter expands on that short story, opening new vistas as unexpected and magical as the sunset-lit terrace off Annie and Edward’s living room. The result is a novel that explores longing and frustration like no other book I read this year, mapping emotional and physical worlds that readers will find heartbreakingly familiar yet thrillingly unusual.” —Slate
"…A sprawling, gutting romance…Terrace Story’s metaphysical turns are undergirded by intense, emotional precision…We may well outgrow one another the way we outgrow our house, our home, and even our planet. That’s a difficult truth to swallow. Perhaps we can only see it clearly piece by piece, story by story, over a lifetime. That is the pleasure and heartbreak of reading Leichter’s work: the knowledge that sometimes stories have no beginning or end.” —BOMB Magazine
“Prepare to be astonished. Like the magical terrace of its title, Hilary Leichter’s spectacular second novel contains the whole world. Told with boundless imagination, wisdom, and effortlessly gorgeous prose, Terrace Story will transform your understanding of time, space, memory, love, longing, and family and make you see your life anew. This book is a wonder.”
—Jessamine Chan, author of The School for Good Mothers
”Hilary Leichter, one of our most original novelists, amazes us again with a beautifully unclassifiable novel. Step out onto the terrace, where space and time, cause and effect, and fiction and reality have been redefined and gorgeously subverted. Terrace Story isn’t a novel you merely read; it’s a book you inhabit.” —Hernan Diaz, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Trust
”Truly brilliant and profound. There's magic between these covers. Leichter is the master of creating a mood and a world that is both breezy and earth-shattering. I felt changed by this book. Every page is revelatory and left me happily breathless, and the story broke my heart in the best way. I thank the literary heavens for Terrace Story.”
—Diane Cook, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of The New Wilderness
“Terrace Story is brilliantly inventive, enchanting, disturbing, beautiful, and unlike anything I’ve ever read. I loved what it does with time—gone and not gone, lost and found where we never put it. Really extraordinary.” —Joan Silber, author of Secrets of Happiness and Improvement
“[D]elightful . . . . deeply satisfying. Leichter soars with this cogent yet dreamlike tale.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review
“At the book's heart are the relatable grief and terror that go along with love—of our planet, of another—and the threat of losing it…Leichter bends minds—and physics—to give a light touch to deep grief.” —Kirkus Reviews
"An intelligent and sneakily moving book, perfect for afternoons when you wish you were nowhere other than where you are." —Literary Hub
“A novel of delicious, contemporary surrealism, filled with bright, unexpected wordplay. . . . A world of desperate imagination, hidden costs, and houses too good to be true."
—Bustle
“Terrace Story is fun and profound, fickle and erudite. It is an irresistibly cool book.” —Booklist
“The speculative novel is an inventive, wonky meditation on belonging and loneliness, grief and loss that both puzzles the mind and pierces the heart. . . . Terrace Story is an impressive literary feat.”
—SF Chronicle
“Terrace Story is funny and sad, tremendous and profound, beautiful and honest even or especially when Leichter is leading us down the strange paths of her brilliant imagination.” —The Rumpus