Rose Tremain

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A Tale of Revenge from the Sunday Times bestselling author

Lily

From the bestselling author of The Gustav Sonata

Islands of Mercy

Evangelista's Fan

From the Sunday Times bestselling author

The Way I Found Her

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Lily

Restoration

A Man of His Time

Merivel

The Darkness of Wallis Simpson

From the Sunday Times bestselling author of The Gustav Sonata

Trespass

Sacred Country

The American Lover

Music & Silence

The Colour

The Road Home

The Gustav Sonata

Scenes from a Vanished Life

Rosie

Vintage Minis

Friendship

Evangelista's Fan (Storycuts)

The Darkness of Wallis Simpson (Storycuts)

How It Stacks Up (Storycuts)

Peerless (Storycuts)

Absolutely and Forever

PRAISE FOR ABSOLUTELY AND FOREVER: 
'Stunningly beautiful and deeply moving'

A slim, funny, elegantly breezy coming-of-age story

Written with piercing clarity and gentle humour, Absolutely And Forever is a study of the messiness of human relationships, the significance of secrets unspoken and the impact of the choices we make

This is a book about the comic, painful, life-long search for human understanding. Not a word is wasted; not a phrase trite. It is mesmerising, masterly and profoundly moving

[A] delicate, generous-hearted novel

From page 4 of Absolutely and Forever we are swept back to the 1960s ... Skill and insouciance

There are only a handful of writers whose novels I read on publication day. Rose Tremain is one of them

An electrifying, word-perfect tale ... [A] gently devastating, devastatingly beautiful novel

PRAISE FOR ROSE TREMAIN: 
 
One of my favourite writers

Tremain is one of the best novelists writing today

Pulsatingly alive. . . no one can break your heart quite like this

Rose Tremain's fiction is my gold-standard

This is not the kind of book you would expect from an 80-year-old dame, but Rose Tremain has always surprised and delighted her readers…a slim, funny, elegantly breezy coming-of-age story… [and] Tremain’s most personal novel yet

A brilliant evocation of growing up in the 1960s, which will ring true for those of us who lived through the period… Highly recommended

An electrifying love story from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Lily

A piercing story of thwarted love and true friendship from one of our greatest living writers 
 
Marianne Clifford, 15, only child of a peppery army colonel and his vain wife, Lal, falls helplessly and absolutely for Simon Hurst, 18, whose cleverness and physical beauty suggest that he will go forward into a successful and monied future, helped on by doting parents. But fate intervenes. Simon's plans are blown off course, and Marianne is forced to bury her dreams of a future together. 
 
Narrating her own story, characterising herself as ignorant and unworthy, Marianne's telling use of irony and smart thinking gradually suggest to us that she has underestimated her own worth. We begin to believe that - in the end, supported by her courageous Scottish friend, Petronella - she will find the life she never stops craving. But what we can't envisage is that beneath his blithe exterior, Simon Hurst has been nursing a secret which will alter everything.

Rose Tremain's novels and short stories have been published in thirty countries and have won many awards, including the Orange Prize (The Road Home), the Dylan Thomas Award (The Colonel's Daughter and Other Stories), the Whitbread Novel of the Year (Music & Silence) the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Prix Femina in France (Sacred Country) and the South Bank Sky Arts Award (The Gustav Sonata). Her most recent novel is Lily, a Richard and Judy Book Club selection. Rose Tremain was made a CBE in 2007 and a Dame in 2020. She lives in Norfolk and London with the biographer, Richard Holmes.

‘Gorgeous’ Observer * ‘Profoundly moving’ Financial Times * ‘Electrifying’ Daily Mail 
 
How do you find the courage to make your own life? An electrifying novel about first love set in 1960s London from the bestselling Rose Tremain 
 
Marianne is fifteen when she falls helplessly and absolutely in love with Simon. Simon owns a Morris Minor, is in his final year at school and has a dazzling future ahead of him. Desperate to escape the stifling 1950s suburbs she has been raised in, Marianne feels sure she will be able to find true happiness with him. 
 
However a twist of fate sees Simon’s glittering future dashed and with it Marianne’s dreams. He flees the country and Marianne, realising she will now have to make a life of her own, moves to London determined to reinvent herself. But Marianne cannot let go of that first all-encompassing love and all the while Simon is in Paris, nursing a secret that will alter everything. 
 
‘A perfect Tremain novel… English, dark and yearning… Remarkable… Tremain shows us the things that make every human life extraordinary’ The Times 
 
‘A complex tale of becoming that’s moving, evocative and mesmerising in its acuity’ Mail on Sunday 
 
READERS LOVE ABSOLUTELY AND FOREVER: 
 
'Heartrending, funny, unputdownable' 5***** 
 
'An undoubted modern classic' 5***** 
 
'Marianne will remain with me as a friend' 5***** 
 
'A masterclass in character and world building ... the writing is just sublime' 5*****

Absolutely and Forever

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Rose Tremain

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