First Love

Gwendoline Riley

From Shelf: The 2017 Women's Prize for Fiction Longlist

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2017 and GOLDSMITHS PRIZE 2017 - A tightly-wound, razor-sharp novel that questions our competing desires for intimacy and for freedom.

'A singular, devastating journey into the ungovernable reaches of the heart' Observer SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2017 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?