First Love

Shortlisted for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction 2017 Shortlisted for the International Dylan Thomas Prize 2018 When we cuddle in bed at night, he says, ‘I love you so much!’ or ‘You’re such a lovely little person!’ There are pet names, too. I’m ‘little smelly puss’ before a bath, and ‘little cleany puss’ in my towel on the  landing after one; in my dungarees I’m ‘you little Herbert!”…There have been other names, of course. What do we sacrifice of ourselves to cleave to another person? Neve is a writer in her mid-30s married to an older man, Edwyn. For now they are in a place of relative peace, but their past battles have left scars. As Neve recalls the decisions that led her to this marriage, she tells of other loves and other debts, from her bullying father and her self-involved mother to a musician who played her and a series of lonely flights from place to place. Drawing the reader into the battleground of her relationship, Neve spins a story of helplessness and hostility, an ongoing conflict in which both husband and wife have played a part. But is this, nonetheless, also a story of love? 'A singular, devastating journey into the ungovernable reaches of the heart' - Observer