My Lover's Lover [Paperback]

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.

'O'Farrell's second novel, written with passion and clarity, beautifully describes how old relationships can haunt new lovers'

'A quietly dramatic dissection of the way past loves can haunt the present' (The Daily Telegraph )

'...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 )

'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 )

'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 )

'O'Farrell understands human nature in frightening depth and skilfully lays a trail of half-truths and mystery to ensnare and enthral'

'A gripping exploration of the ambivalence at the heart of intimate relationships, and a superbly imagined story of a haunting'

'An epic, domestic romance... a worthy sequel to AFTER YOU'D GONE'

'A quietly dramatic dissection of the way past loves can haunt the present'

'Beautifully written'

'This Rebecca-esque ghost story puts at its heart the gnawing insecurities that any act of intimacy soon invites'

'O'Farrell's writing has a crystalline precision of idiom - there isn't one image that fails to ignite recognition'

'An intense, unnerving and passionate story of betrayal, loss and love in the past and present'

Maggie O'Farrell's second novel is an intense, unnerving and passionate story of betrayal, loss and love, with all the frisson and psychological intensity of REBECCA.

When Lily moves into Marcus's flat and plunges headlong into a relationship, she must contend not merely with the disapproval of flatmate Aidan, but with a more intangible, hostile presence. Could it be that Sinead, Marcus's ex, is trying to communicate with her? When Lily begins to 'see' Sinead, first about the flat, and then on the streets of London, she must question not merely her sanity, but whether the man she loves is someone she can, or indeed ought, to live with at all. (20030111)

Maggie O`Farrell is the author of five novels, AFTER YOU`D GONE, MY LOVER`S LOVER, THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US, which won a Somerset Maugham Award, THE VANISHING ACT OF ESME LENNOX, and THE HAND THAT FIRST HELD MINE, which won the 2010 Costa Novel Award. She lives in Edinburgh. (20030119)

Excerpted from My Lover's Lover by Maggie O'Farrell. Copyright © 2002. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Lily slips into the back stairs of the gallery, in search of another bathroom. There's a toilet on the ground floor, but a long queue of people is snaked around its door. The sweat she's broken out in from being crammed in a room with too many people cools on her skin. As she climbs the flight of stairs she imagines she's leaving a swirl of water molecules in her wake.
The gallery is in one of those Victorian terraced houses that stretch in rows all over the city. They are all roughly the same layout, but where the bathroom usually is – at the back of the house on the first floor – Lily finds a small office smelling faintly of wet coffee granules.
She leans on the spiralling banister and looks down. From this distance, the mass of voices sound like frogs, high-pitched and regular. Then she hears something else – heavy footsteps of someone descending the staircase.
The floor judders as Marcus comes down from the upper floor. She straightens up, turning towards him in the half-light. But he moves nearer and, without speaking, slides one arm around her shoulders and the other around her waist. The length of his body rests against hers. He bends his head and presses his lips to the dip just below her cheekbone.
Lily is so shocked she does nothing. She stands in the cage of his arms, breathing in the scent of his hair, his skin, the wool of his sweater, the wine on his breath. His face feels damp, as if he's just washed it.
Then she feels something else entirely. A movement of air, tiny, imperceptible, a slight disturbance in the atmosphere. Someone else is there. Someone else is with them, watching them. She pulls away from him, twisting her head round. No one there. She cranes her head past him. No one there either.
She looks back at him, slightly thrown. It's in her mind to ask him a question, but she can't quite form what it is. The moment see-saws between them, and it's one of a peculiar, febrile clarity: she can hear the blood-throb of his heart, the static shift of her shoe-soles against the carpet. There are textures everywhere: he scratches his head and hair-shaft crackles against scalp, nails against follicles. Their clothes, moving on their bodies, are bonfires of silk against cotton, wool against denim.
He is rooting for something in his back pocket. ‘I've got something to show you.' He makes an elaborate circling movement with his hands, like an illusionist revealing the final apparition of a trick. He opens his palm, flat, and holds it out to her. In its centre is a slip of paper. ‘It's a piece of paper,' he says.
Lily reaches up and touches the place where his lips had been. ‘I can see that.'
‘Do you want it?'
They look at it together, a tiny runway on his outstretched hand. She keeps her face serious. ‘Not really.'
‘How about if I write my phone number on it?'
Lily laughs.
‘Well?' he says.
‘No,' she says, an inexplicable belligerence taking hold of her, ‘still don't want it.'
‘That's very rude,' he says. He stretches the paper between his hands and snaps it against the air. ‘Didn't your mother ever teach you any manners?' Leaning on the banister, he scribbles on it with the narrow lead of a propelling pencil. ‘Here,' he says, pushing it into her pocket. ‘Promise you'll call me.' He keeps his hand in her pocket, pulling her to him. ‘Promise?'
And because she doesn't want to give him what he wants, or at least not yet, doesn't want to let him have things his way, she asks, ‘Are you really looking for a new flatmate?'
He blinks. The hand in her pocket moves, tenses, then withdraws. ‘Maybe. Why?'
‘I know someone who's looking.'
‘Who?'
‘Me. I've been living at my mother's for two months and it's driving me mad.'
He studies her face with such intensity that she knows he's thinking about something else. ‘You,' he says, as if weighing the word on his tongue. Then he swallows. ‘Yes,' he says, ‘yes I am. You have to call me now,' he shouts, as he thunders down the stairs.