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The Small Hours [Hardcover]

Susie Boyt
4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
RRP: £14.99
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Book Description

1 Nov 2012

Harriet Mansfield, brave, wry and handsome, is determined to triumph no matter what. With a decade of therapy under her belt and a new large inheritance, it seems there is nothing she cannot achieve.

So she decides to open the school of her dreams. To her precious little girls, rich in everything but care, she vows to provide the happiest childhoods in the world. For everyone knows that early years passed in delightful ways can set you up for life.

But can this ambitious new departure spill some retrospective sweetness onto Harriet's own harsh beginnings, or better still cancel them out altogether? Will the family she's estranged from ever grant her the recognition she craves?

Written with deep psychological insight and coal-black humour The Small Hours is a stunning meditation on love, self-love and forgiveness, and their shadowy opposites.


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Product details

  • Hardcover: 224 pages
  • Publisher: Virago (1 Nov 2012)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1844088251
  • ISBN-13: 978-1844088256
  • Product Dimensions: 14.2 x 2.2 x 22.1 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 93,491 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Review

Darkly funny . . . You can't help wishing that everyone was a bit more like Harriet (Emma Herdman Marie Claire )

The Small Hours excites with refined delights . . . Boyt's economical prose remains elegantly polished, her descriptions of the subtleties of psychotherapy spine-tingling . . . A meaty yet accessible novel possessing great psychological rigour (Lucy Beresford Sunday Telegraph )

An unsettling yet absorbing story (Ben Felsenberg Metro )

Boyt weaves an engaging combination of psychological insight and piercing black humour to produce a thoroughly engaging, thought-provoking story (Mel Clarke The Lady )

An exquisitely written tale of a damaged woman attempting to mend her past with a grand gesture (Psychologies magazine )

The Small Hours is an absolute gem of a novel: exquisite, diamond-bright and lacerating to the hardest of hearts (Amanda Craig Literary Review )

Boyt delicately interweaves the revelation of Harriet's past with the unravelling of her present and skilfully leavens the inevitable tragic conclusion with the exuberance and chatter of the girls, who bring as much joy to the reader as their teacher (Michael Arditti Daily Mail )

Boyt has a gift for creating loveable protagonists . . . Boyt has studied Henry James and his stylistic influence is visible, both in the vibrant intensity of Harriet's character and the rich dramatisation of her consciousness (Freya McClelland Independent )

Harriet's pain is clear through the fine mesh of taut and witty prose (A N Wilson Reader's Digest )

A divinely dark book . . . The Small Hours reminds us of the best and the worst of how we treat each other (Jackie McGlone Sunday Herald )

Boyt is a compassionate chronicler of the human heart . . . The point of this novel is not whether your dreams succeed or fail, but whether you're still willing to risk having dreams at all. In Harriet Mansfield, Boyt has drawn a character whose moral and emotional courage is both convincing and heartbreaking (Rebecca Abrams Financial Times )

Book Description

A wonderful and startling novel about the havoc and pain, healing and love that comes with growing up in a family. Like A.L. Kennedy and Ali Smith, Susie Boyt is an exquisite writer, thoughtful and truly original.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
By Susie B TOP 50 REVIEWER
Format:Hardcover
In Susie Boyt's new novel, we meet the main character, thirty-eight-year-old Harriet, just as she is ending her last session with her psychiatrist after several years of therapy. Harriet, tall, ungainly, with flaming red hair, has not had an easy life; abused by her mother; rebuffed by her brother; even Paris loathes her, she tells us, where the assistants in the city's shoe shops gasp with horror when she asks to try a continental size 43. Harriet thinks herself exaggerated and overblown: "I am a sort of caricature. I am big, garish, I'm overt. When I'm in a car with people they wind their windows down to let a bit of me out!" After time spent in a psychiatric hospital and follow-up sessions with her psychiatrist, Harriet realizes the time has come to take control of her life and with a large inheritance to help her, she decides to open her own nursery school - but this will not be an ordinary school; this will be the nursery school of her dreams.

As Harriet sets to work to realize her dream, creating a wonderful establishment where academic achievement is eschewed in favour of art, music and creative play, the reader begins to ask oneself who Harriet is doing this for. Is it so she can give the children in her care the sort of early life experience that was denied to her, is she trying to make herself feel better by attempting to cancel out what happened to her when she was a child, or is Harriet understandably trying to feel valued and to convince her family that she is worth taking notice of? And are Harriet's dreams of her own little piece of heaven finally realized, or does life have a few more punches in store for our heroine?

First-person narrated by Harriet, the reader is immediately pulled into her eccentric and bewildering world as we follow her on her difficult journey through life. This novel is beautifully written, emotionally profound, poignant and blackly humorous, and Susie Boyt (who, I was interested to discover, is the great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud) has written this story with a deep psychological insight. I found this an absorbing and involving read and felt it was impossible not to feel for Harriet, to want to cheer her on in her endeavours and to intensely hope for a happy ending for her - but do we get one? I obviously have to leave that for prospective readers to discover.

4 Stars.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars my book of the year 19 Nov 2012
By l mars
Format:Hardcover
Sometimes , if you're lucky , you find an author who seems to write especially for you . Susie Boyt is mine and her latest novel The Small Hours is a marvel.
It's funny , wry , heartbreaking and hopeful , her heroine Harriet Mansfield is an inspiring creation and the story of what's happened to her in the past and how she attempts to overcome it is terribly moving . There's a lot of pain in this book but much humour too , it's also ravishingly well -written and I know I'll be returning to Harriet again as well as buying it for all my friend's for Christmas.
A beautiful book about the best and worst of how we treat each other.
Highly recommended.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Dark, subtle and moving 26 Nov 2012
Format:Hardcover
'The Small Hours' is a dark, subtle and moving novel and my favourite yet of Susie Boyt's books. It's a slim thing, a mere 200 pages, but what Boyt communicates to us about her characters- their pasts, their self-image, their ambitions - is enormous in quantity yet Chekhovian in economy. Her protagonist, Harriet Mansfield, is a particularly thorough and fascinating invention: loveable, infuriating, pathetic and redemptive, with a strange preoccupation for her own feet.

What is most impressive, though, is the rangy, discursive nature of this book. Like Kundera, Boyt teleports us between timezones, places and voices ambitiously and with formidable ease. We move from the voice of a compassionate, Jamesian narrator into the childlike mind of Harriet Mansfield and back again without ever feeling the bump.

In short, a triumph.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Read
I read great reviews about this book but it didn't really do it for me. I liked the concept but it was quite a sombre read which I hadn't expected..
Published 2 months ago by Mrs. Kate Tilston
3.0 out of 5 stars Good news and bad news
I'll begin with what I loved about this novel; it's unlikely heroine. Tall, ungainly, with huge feet and flaming red hair and no self-confidence, Harriet has a lot to prove,... Read more
Published 2 months ago by F. M. M. Stott
5.0 out of 5 stars Susie Boyt's The Small Hours - a must read
The Small Hours by Susie Boyt is a wonderful book. Ms Boyt's writing style is compelling with exquisite attention to detail. Read more
Published 3 months ago by CE
5.0 out of 5 stars Witty, Wise and Altogether Wonderful!
I thoroughly enjoyed this slightly eccentric book and adored the fantastically drawn protagonist Harriet Mansfield. Read more
Published 3 months ago by CaSundara
4.0 out of 5 stars Piercingly sad, wryly funny.
To describe the bones of this story runs the risk of it sounding like yet another misery memoir. Though it is indeed the story of a woman who is damaged by an abusive upbringing,... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Sue Kichenside
5.0 out of 5 stars Intensely moving
I was deeply touched by this book in all sorts of ways:the almost unbearably acute and pin sharp descriptions, the empathy generated for Harriet and the extraordinarily tight and... Read more
Published 4 months ago by ebc
5.0 out of 5 stars Review of The Small Hours
This is an excellent book. It is gritty and uncomfortable at times. Yet interspersed with delights. Boyt's observations are both sharp and insightful.
Published 4 months ago by R Webster
5.0 out of 5 stars from sweet cakes to much darker things in seconds
I have just finished reading both both Susie Boyt's Normal man and The Small Hours.
Well, gosh and wow - what an extraordinary stories both - a normal man is the child for the... Read more
Published 4 months ago by artthings
2.0 out of 5 stars small hours susie boyt
a well written ,unusual and enjoyable story and i think that as a fairly light read it would be a welcome
Published 4 months ago by gillian mackichan
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant novel
I throughly enjoyed this newest of Ms. Boyt's work, The Small Hour. Wishes realized, smiles and stabs, rich yet dark, like bitter sweet chocolate.
Published 5 months ago by James and Julie's Dad
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