The Hand That First Held Mine

Author(s): Maggie O'Farrell

Fiction

Lexie Sinclair yearns for more than her parents' genteel country life. She makes her way to the city, where she meets a magazine editor, Innes, a man unlike any she has ever imagined. He introduces her to the thrilling world of bohemian postwar London, and Lexie learns to become a reporter, to know art and artists, to live fully, unconventionally, and with deep love. And when she finds herself pregnant by a man wholly unsuitable for marriage or fatherhood, she doesn't hesitate a minute to have the baby on her own. Later, in present-day London, a young painter named Elina dizzily navigates the first weeks of motherhood after a traumatic birth. Her boyfriend, Ted, shaken by nearly losing her in labor, begins to recover lost memories from his own obscured childhood. As the memory flashes return with ever more disconcerting frequency, we discover a heartbreaking and beautiful revelation that connects these two women and their stories. A stunning portrait of motherhood and the artist's life in all their terror and glory, Maggie O'Farrell's newest novel is a gorgeous inquiry into the ways we make and unmake our lives, and how even our most accidental legacies connect us.


Product Information

An unforgettable novel of love and motherhood from bestselling author Maggie O'Farrell

Winner of Costa Novel Award 2010. Shortlisted for Galaxy National Book Awards: Waterstone's UK Author of the Year 2010.

'O'Farrell has a remarkable ability to convey the texture of human emotion with precision' -- Observer 'Like Daphne du Maurier...O'Farrell writes books designed to...bring our most primal fears to the surface' -- Daily Mail 'O'Farrell is a skilful, impassioned writer...engaging and fluent' -- Sunday Telegraph 'Genuinely unputdownable...evidence of her place as one of Britain's most engaging contemporary novelists' -- Literary Review

Maggie O'Farrell was born in Northern Ireland in 1972, and grew up in Wales and Scotland. She now lives in London. Her debut novel, AFTER YOU'D GONE, was published to international acclaim, and won a Betty Trask Award.

General Fields

  • : 9780755308460
  • : Headline Publishing Group
  • : Tinder Press
  • : 0.263
  • : March 2011
  • : 198mm X 131mm X 25mm
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Maggie O'Farrell
  • : Paperback
  • : 1
  • : English
  • : 823/.914
  • : 384
  • : FA