Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
Original language
English
Categories
Historical adventure fiction

HELOISE

Mandy Hager

What happens when the 12th century’s most famous French lovers are caught in the crossfire of factions, religious reform and blind ambition?

Heloise has an exceptional mind. In her determination to pursue learning rather than marriage or life as a cloistered nun, her path inevitably crosses with Peter Abelard, the celebrity philosopher, theologian and master at Paris' famed Cathedral School.

When two such brilliant minds meet and engage, sparks are likely to fly. And when those two minds belong to a charismatic man and a determined young woman, those sparks are likely to ignite. But theirs is an impossible love.

At a time when the Gregorian Reforms are starting to bite and celibacy among the clergy and church officials is being rigorously imposed, these two embark on an affair that will see their lives forever changed.

Based on meticulous up-to-date research and the pair's own writings, this novel recreates the times, offers a plausible interpretation of the known facts and a vivid imagining of the gaps in this legendary story. So, too, it shines a light on a changing world whose attitudes and politics are not so very different from our own.

Mandy Hager has been awarded the Katherine Mansfield Menton fellowship for 2014, and she was the 2012 recipient of the New Zealand Society of Authors Beatson Fellowship. She won the Esther Glen Award for Fiction for her YA novel Smashed and Best Young Adult Book in the NZ Post Book Awards 2010 for The Crossing. The Nature of Ashwon the LIANZA YA Fiction Award in 2013 and was shortlisted for the 2013 NZ Post Children's Book Awards.In 2015 her novel Singing Home the Whale was awarded a Storylines Notable Book Award; was a finalist for the LIANZA YA Fiction award; it won the YA category of the New Zealand Book Awards for Children and Young Adults; and was named the 2015 Margaret Mahy Book of the Year. Singing Home the Whale was described by the judges as a novel that "should be compulsory reading in any country that still hunts whales." Hager has a MA in Creative Writing from Victoria University and an Advanced Diploma in Applied Arts (Writing) from Whitireia Community Polytechnic, where she now works as a tutor and mentor. She lives with her partner on the Kapiti Coast.
She has written novels for adults and young adults, short stories, scripts, and non-fiction resources for young people.

Available products
Book Published 2017-06-01 by Penguin Books
Book Published 2017-06-01 by Penguin Books

Comments

I feel like I've had this door into the twelfth century just flung open and it's just a very, very, very good book. She's such a good writer.

An absorbing tale which draws readers into Heloise and Abelard's world.

Hager has fleshed out the familiar parts of the story with prodigious research, including some intriguing byways of church history and skulduggery, and created an immersive read that grips our attention.

A determined and commendable attempt to imagine the kind of life Heloise would have experienced. She has obviously researched the material thoroughly, and her solid background of writing for young adults has been good preparation. It is a huge canvas that Hager has chosen to work on. She has done a remarkable job of re-creating the atmosphere, conventions and flavour of the time.

This is also a novel of language. Don’t expect to rush through it, as you might a lightly told love story. Hager is in thrall to the lovers’ language – miraculously preserved in their own writings and letters – and to the classical literature that was the foundation of their intellects. . . I loved Heloise and was enriched by it.

Read the novel and see how Hager interrogates and humanises this epistolary tale and intelligently imagines many of the inevitable gaps. It is a deeply psychological re-reading and plausible interpretation of a body of correspondence and its times. Hager demonstrates that Héloïse’s letters contribute to one of the earliest, most radical feminist philosophies of the 12th century (illuming the price involved), one which is still relevant today. In an era awash with text messages and twitterings about what we had for breakfast, Heloise is invigorating and invites us to consider the fabric of communication.