2017 HWA Debut Crown Award (longlist)
'Gripping' Margaret Atwood
'Captivating' Louis de Bernières
'Magnificent' Alexander McCall Smith
In 1930, a young man, torn apart by his illegal desire, stands on a deserted Scottish beach. Wystan H. Auden is only twenty-four and longing to be a great poet; longing too, for someone who understands him. He scribbles his telephone number on a piece of paper, puts it in an empty milk bottle, and flings it into the sea.
Decades later, Dora Fielding stands on the same beach, lost and desperate. Struggling to cope alone with her baby and suffocating in the small town, she yearns for connection. This is when she finds the message in the bottle. And calls the number.
What happens next is a breathtaking leap of faith that rejoices in the power of the human imagination.
Genre: Literary Fiction
'Captivating' Louis de Bernières
'Magnificent' Alexander McCall Smith
In 1930, a young man, torn apart by his illegal desire, stands on a deserted Scottish beach. Wystan H. Auden is only twenty-four and longing to be a great poet; longing too, for someone who understands him. He scribbles his telephone number on a piece of paper, puts it in an empty milk bottle, and flings it into the sea.
Decades later, Dora Fielding stands on the same beach, lost and desperate. Struggling to cope alone with her baby and suffocating in the small town, she yearns for connection. This is when she finds the message in the bottle. And calls the number.
What happens next is a breathtaking leap of faith that rejoices in the power of the human imagination.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"A mysterious, wondrous, captivating book." - Louis de Bernières
"Larchfield is that rarest of rare first novels - a book that actually achieves its great ambition. I found it so immensely readable; it's brainy, verbally acute and knowing, with an ingenious literary historical premise that it impressively (and artfully) carries off right in front of your eyes. It's work of considerable talent." - Richard Ford
"The sense of danger hanging over the characters kept me reading until past midnight." - Marina Lewycka
"A story beautifully and passionately rendered." - Margie Orford
"Larchfield is beautifully eloquent about that quotidian kind of courage that so often goes overlooked: that fortitude that allows us to engage compassion through our loneliness, and to construct a future in which our truest selves might fit." - Jim Shepard
"Larchfield is that rarest of rare first novels - a book that actually achieves its great ambition. I found it so immensely readable; it's brainy, verbally acute and knowing, with an ingenious literary historical premise that it impressively (and artfully) carries off right in front of your eyes. It's work of considerable talent." - Richard Ford
"The sense of danger hanging over the characters kept me reading until past midnight." - Marina Lewycka
"A story beautifully and passionately rendered." - Margie Orford
"Larchfield is beautifully eloquent about that quotidian kind of courage that so often goes overlooked: that fortitude that allows us to engage compassion through our loneliness, and to construct a future in which our truest selves might fit." - Jim Shepard
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Used availability for Polly Clark's Larchfield