Lovesong

Lillie has come a long way from the shimmering heat, big skies and rocky mountains of her home. A long way not just in terms of distance, but in terms of experience. For it is here in England, a land of cold, scuffed and tumbling streets, that she finds the love she has needed for so long. Lovesong is a romance, but it is also a tightly woven thriller, a sumptuous and truly extraordinary work. Drawing on the themes of displacement and home that threaded through her previous novels, Gemmell has crafted a gripping plot, peopled it with sympathetic characters and enfolded it in language of startling originality and beauty. Lovesong is a lovely, lyrical creation that has melody and melancholy aching through its sentences . . . bewitchingly good Elle, Book of the Month A strange and lovely novel . . . The plot, carefully wrought, surprising but utterly convincing, rushes the protagonists across the world and back, through layers of innocence, love, guilt and sacrifice, to the ultimate end and beyond to the hope of a new generation The Times An arrestingly strange love story . . . it s punchy but poetic and above all, heartbreaking Glamour, Must-read of the Month One of the few truly original voices to emerge in a long time Time Out, NY