About Rose Petal by E.H. Barrett
Some friendships are as delicate as a rose petal.
He has thought about it carefully. He has thought about everything carefully – that is rather the point, and rather the problem.
On the early train he takes every morning, a man who has arranged his life around distance finds himself in conversation with the woman who reads across the aisle. She believes restraint can be a form of respect. He believes restraint doesn’t remove pressure, only relocates it. Between stations, he begins to account for himself: a father who filled rooms with promises he couldn’t keep, a mother counting coins into neat stacks, and the quiet early decision to become a man nobody would ever have to worry about.
Rose Petal is a literary novella of about 29,000 words – a short, quiet, interior book you can finish in a single sitting. For readers of Kazuo Ishiguro and Julian Barnes, and for anyone who has ever thought their way out of feeling something.
The Kindle edition will be FREE on Friday 2 October and Saturday 3 October 2026.
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Author Bio:
E.H. Barrett writes for people who overthink life. He lives in Toronto with his wife and their two children. Rose Petal, his first published book, is a novella about a man who has arranged his life around restraint – and the single conversation that tests it. When he isn’t writing, he builds software. His books are published under StillW_ters Publishing. He is drawn to quiet stories about the distance people keep from one another, and to the things people decide, carefully, not to say.