My Lover's Lover
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Amazon.co.uk Review
Maggie O'Farrell was heralded as a major new writer with her debut novel, After You'd Gone. And here she is with My Lover's Lover, demonstrating again her extraordinary talent. The coda to the novel's final part is Evelyn Waugh's "To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom". It's the choices and chances, the compromises and delusions, made in the search for love that preoccupy O'Farrell's central characters. The setting is 30-something London, New York, and rural China. Lily and Marcus meet at a gallery opening; almost the day after, they're sharing his chic loft, and soon after that, his bed. But if this sounds like chick-lit, any similarities end here. Narrated in four parts, O'Farrell moves adeptly from third to first person, from present to past to future.
Through Lily's account in the first section, a claustrophobic fear pulsates: she is haunted by Marcus's previous lover, Sinead, who seems to be everywhere--"The flat seems sticky with Sinead's fingerprints. [Lily] doesn't know what to do." But according to Marcus, Sinead "is no longer with us". On every page, O'Farrell's transcription of the body as register of the emotions, of fear and desire, is breathtaking. Language dissects and insinuates; revelations unfurl and double back. Sinead's incredulity at Marcus's being "not exactly faithful" and Marcus's old friend Aidan's consternation at his own secret longings are described with such tactility, such spare suggestiveness that these lovers' tales take on a brooding, yet haphazard quality. O'Farrell is an insightful and passionate chronicler of human emotions. It's compulsive and thrilling stuff. --Ruth Petrie --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
'A quietly dramatic dissection of the way past loves can haunt the present' (The Daily Telegraph 20021229)
'MY LOVER'S LOVER is a beautiful, lyrical, haunting tale of a girlfriend obsessed by her lover's feelings towards the woman who came before her' (Daily Express )
'...an emotional whirlwind, all passionate yearnings, raw pain and messy truths; powerful in nailing the complications of love without missing it out the power of the emotions involved' (The Scotsman )
'Beautifully written' (Heat )
'This Rebecca-esque ghost story puts at its heart the gnawing insecurities that any act of intimacy soon invites' (The Independent )
'O'Farrell's writing has a crystalline precision of idiom - there isn't one image that fails to ignite recognition' (Independent on Sunday )
'An intense, unnerving and passionate story of betrayal, loss and love in the past and present' (Sunday Mirror )
'O'Farrell has honourably equalled the success of her first novel, After You'd Gone, with a story that is certainly as absorbing - and just as beautifully written' (Sunday Express )
'MY LOVER'S LOVER is a beautiful, lyrical, haunting tale of a girlfriend obsessed by her lover's feelings towards the woman who came before her' (Daily Express )
'...an emotional whirlwind, all passionate yearnings, raw pain and messy truths; powerful in nailing the complications of love without missing it out the power of the emotions involved' (The Scotsman )
'Beautifully written' (Heat )
'This Rebecca-esque ghost story puts at its heart the gnawing insecurities that any act of intimacy soon invites' (The Independent )
'O'Farrell's writing has a crystalline precision of idiom - there isn't one image that fails to ignite recognition' (Independent on Sunday )
'An intense, unnerving and passionate story of betrayal, loss and love in the past and present' (Sunday Mirror )
'O'Farrell has honourably equalled the success of her first novel, After You'd Gone, with a story that is certainly as absorbing - and just as beautifully written' (Sunday Express )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
awful, awful book,
By
This review is from: My Lover's Lover (Paperback)
This is a terrible book. The worst kind of pretentious modern writing, over-describing simple acts, trying to be elliptical and deep but just being tedious. No plot to speak of, characters that are not even one-dimensional and that you couldn't care less about, a ridiculously overblown first part and then a drearily mundane last part and an ending that was telegraphed. The best thing that could be said for it is that it didn't take long to read and I will know never to read anything by this "writer" again. Don't waste your time.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
undecided,
By
This review is from: My Lover's Lover (Paperback)
I was really looking forward to reading this after reading the blurb on the back, it sounded exciting but after reading it I was left a bit disappointed and wondering if I actually enjoyed it or not. I must say I couldn't put the book down and I did read it in one sitting, so it did grab my attention and I thought the style of writing was good but I found myself annoyed very early on...how realistic was it that Lily would doubt Marcus so much and wonder aobut the whereabouts of his ex girlfriend but still move in with him (and fall for him) before any real questions were asked? As the book went on I found it enjoyable enough and somewhat spooky but further along realised that it was more about past love lingering than an actual haunting, towards the end I wanted all the loose ends to be tied up but they never were. The book ended a bit flakily I thought, no real explainations and we never got to find out anything substantial about Marcus, Aiden or Lily. I would have liked a deeper exploration of their personalities, less of the spookiness and Marcus to have been more menacing.
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Is it Mills and Boons?,
By michi (UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: My Lover's Lover (Paperback)
I was looking forward to reading this book, excited by the tremendous number of good quality rave criticism. However after reading a few pages I found the writing a complete disappointment, cliched but with great detail on total trivialities, it was more like Mills and Boons trying to be deep. Lily meets Marcus and before she's even spoken to him there are scalding looks and you know she's going to fall in love with him but you don't know why. By the end of the book you still don't know why. The only believable character is Sinead, his ex-girlfriend but her story is told as a side issue even though it is the most interesting sub plot. There are too many unconvincing bits, like why Lily keeps seeing apparitions of Sinead in her flat (even though this was the only truly haunting part) but it was not explained. Aidan, Marcus's best friend spent the first half the book depicted as an unfriendly, dark character who you assumed is in love with Marcus and the second half being revived as a gentle, sensitive soul guarding his heterosexual secret love. The ending is a surprise as it's meant to be but only because nothing led up to it so you don't really care about it anyway. I still can't understand all those rave reviews.
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