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Mohrbooks Literary Agency
Sebastian Ritscher |
| Original language | |
| English | |
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THE CHOSEN
THE CHOSEN by Elizabeth Lowry is a (tragic) love story, a ghost story - and the story of how some of the greatest love poems ever written in English, the 'Poems of 1912-13' by Thomas Hardy, came to exist.
One Wednesday morning in November 1912, Thomas Hardy - an old man in ragged trousers who is entombed by paper - finds Emma, his wife from whom he is becoming increasingly estranged, dying in her bedroom. Between speaking to her and taking his wife in his arms, she passes.
Hardy, his family, and Florence Dugdale - the much younger woman with whom he was in a relationship - assumed he'd be happy, not to mention relieved, to finally be set free. Instead, he is left shattered by the loss.
Hardy finds a set of secret diaries Emma kept about their life together and discovers how Emma truly felt: that he was cold, distant, and incapable of normal human affection - and that he'd kept her childless and a virtual prisoner for forty years. Hardy becomes consumed by something worse than grief: an absence without form or meaning and a chaos in which every certainty has been obliterated.
Hardy's pained reflections on the choices he has made - as well as those he must make - comprise this unique book, a combination of both a love story and a ghost story, by turns tender, surprising, comic, and honest. Based on meticulous research, THE CHOSEN hauntingly searches the unknowable spaces between man and wife, memory and grief, life and art.
Elizabeth Lowry was born in Washington, DC and educated in South Africa and England. She lives and works in Oxford. Her first novel, THE BELLINI MADONNA, was published in 2008 to great acclaim; her second, DARK WATER, was published in 2018 and longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. She is a frequent contributor to The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, and The Wall Street Journal.
Hardy, his family, and Florence Dugdale - the much younger woman with whom he was in a relationship - assumed he'd be happy, not to mention relieved, to finally be set free. Instead, he is left shattered by the loss.
Hardy finds a set of secret diaries Emma kept about their life together and discovers how Emma truly felt: that he was cold, distant, and incapable of normal human affection - and that he'd kept her childless and a virtual prisoner for forty years. Hardy becomes consumed by something worse than grief: an absence without form or meaning and a chaos in which every certainty has been obliterated.
Hardy's pained reflections on the choices he has made - as well as those he must make - comprise this unique book, a combination of both a love story and a ghost story, by turns tender, surprising, comic, and honest. Based on meticulous research, THE CHOSEN hauntingly searches the unknowable spaces between man and wife, memory and grief, life and art.
Elizabeth Lowry was born in Washington, DC and educated in South Africa and England. She lives and works in Oxford. Her first novel, THE BELLINI MADONNA, was published in 2008 to great acclaim; her second, DARK WATER, was published in 2018 and longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. She is a frequent contributor to The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, and The Wall Street Journal.
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Book
Published 2022-04-14 by Riverrun |