Literary Fiction · Free kit

The Names

Florence Knapp

• Literary Fiction
• Contemporary
• Family Saga
• 2025

England, 1987. After a history-making storm, Cora walks her nine-year-old daughter Maia to the registrar to name a newborn son. Her husband Gordon — a respected local doctor and a terrifying presence at home — expects the boy to take his name, as the men in his family have. Cora has three names in her head: Bear, the one Maia invented; Julian, the one she chose; and Gordon, the one she has been told to write. The novel follows all three lives, seven years at a time, and asks what a single act of naming can set in motion — and what no name can protect you from.

“Or perhaps, and this is her real concern, she'll formalize who he will become.”

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