Review
"Irresistibly romantic ...a highly-charged story of love, longing, betrayal and loss ... written with such conviction that you can't help but be swept along by its intensity." - The Mail on Sunday
"Melancholic, mysterious and heartbreakingly gorgeous." --The Times
"written with such conviction that you can't help but be swept along by its intensity." --The Daily Mail
"A sincere attempt to depict the reverberations of war - chronicling fractured relationships and the inability to love in the right way... Anna is a likeable and memorable heroine." --The Guardian
"...Through a series of subtle plot devices and a haunting contemplation of the different kinds of love that we meet in our lifetime, the story builds to a page-turning and tear-jerking climax." -- Lancashire Evening Post
"A hugely affecting novel" --The Yorkshire Post
"Without question one of the best debuts I've read in recent years." --John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
"Melancholic, mysterious and heartbreakingly gorgeous." --The Times
"written with such conviction that you can't help but be swept along by its intensity." --The Daily Mail
"A sincere attempt to depict the reverberations of war - chronicling fractured relationships and the inability to love in the right way... Anna is a likeable and memorable heroine." --The Guardian
"...Through a series of subtle plot devices and a haunting contemplation of the different kinds of love that we meet in our lifetime, the story builds to a page-turning and tear-jerking climax." -- Lancashire Evening Post
"A hugely affecting novel" --The Yorkshire Post
"Without question one of the best debuts I've read in recent years." --John Boyne, author of The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
Product Description
Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2010. A haunting coming-of-age novel with a love story at its heart, for anyone who has ever loved L.P. Hartley's The Go-Between. England, 31st August 1939: the world is on the brink of war. As Hitler prepares to invade Poland, thousands of children are evacuated from London to escape the impending Blitz. Torn from her mother, eight-year-old Anna Sands is relocated with other children to a large Yorkshire estate which has been opened up to evacuees by Thomas and Elizabeth Ashton, an enigmatic childless couple. Soon Anna gets drawn into their unravelling relationship, seeing things that are not meant for her eyes and finding herself part-witness and part-accomplice to a love affair, with unforeseen consequences. A story of longing, loss and complicated loyalties, combining a sweeping narrative with subtle psychological observation, The Very Thought of You is not just a love story but a story about love.
From the Publisher
Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2010
Shortlisted for Amazon's Rising Stars award 2009
Longlisted for the RNA Romantic Novel of the Year 2010
Longlisted for Le Prince Maurice Prize for Literary Love Stories 2010
Shortlisted for Amazon's Rising Stars award 2009
Longlisted for the RNA Romantic Novel of the Year 2010
Longlisted for Le Prince Maurice Prize for Literary Love Stories 2010
About the Author
Born in 1964, Rosie Alison read English at Keble College, Oxford. She spent over ten years working in television, as a producer-director of arts documentaries (her director credits include The South Bank Show, Omnibus and Grand Designs). Currently Head of Development at Heyday Films in the UK - the production company of the Harry Potter film series - she has recently co-produced two feature films (The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and Is There Anybody There?).
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
There was a night in the Spring of 1941 when the bombing in
London was so loud and insistent that Roberta could barely
sleep. By daybreak she had given up any hope of dozing off
again, so she decided to leave her cellar and walk to work early.
She made her way through Olympia and Kensington, unnaturally silent at that hour. Several buildings were turned inside out, their rooms exposed to the curious gaze of the outside world. She saw an iron bath stranded three floors up, held
aloft by chaotically twisted pipes. There were staircases leading nowhere, and shreds of rose-print wallpaper flapping
in the breeze. Charred joists littered the pavements, and
crushed glass was scattered underfoot.
Walking briskly, she reached the empty Bayswater streets
leading towards Oxford Circus, where a few burnt-out houses
looked like half-finished stage sets - skeletal frames still
intimately adorned with photographs and china mementoes of family life. In the trick light of dawn, it was as though
she could sense the spirits of the dead flowing round her, or sitting on the broken chairs of abandoned houses - all
those people whose lives had been so suddenly cut off, now silently thronging the streets as if nothing had changed. Roberta shuddered and pulled her coat tighter, quickening her pace.
She passed a derelict house where a child's cot was poised
precariously on the fourth floor. For a moment she thought
she could hear the phantom cries of a child, high-pitched,
helpless, unanswered; her heart turned over as she thought
of Anna, and her gap-toothed smile.
She arrived at last at the doors of the BBC. The gallows
camaraderie of her colleagues was immediately infectious:
every morning was a celebration for surviving another night.
Roberta spent that day cataloguing old discs, the sentimental melodies of a dozen different dance bands. She came upon an old Al Bowlly number, 'The Very Thought of You', intimately crooned in his sweet lyric tenor. She kept the disc aside, and made a point of adding it to the playlist.
I see your face in every flower,
Your eyes in stars above,
It's just the thought of you,
The very thought of you, my love...
London was so loud and insistent that Roberta could barely
sleep. By daybreak she had given up any hope of dozing off
again, so she decided to leave her cellar and walk to work early.
She made her way through Olympia and Kensington, unnaturally silent at that hour. Several buildings were turned inside out, their rooms exposed to the curious gaze of the outside world. She saw an iron bath stranded three floors up, held
aloft by chaotically twisted pipes. There were staircases leading nowhere, and shreds of rose-print wallpaper flapping
in the breeze. Charred joists littered the pavements, and
crushed glass was scattered underfoot.
Walking briskly, she reached the empty Bayswater streets
leading towards Oxford Circus, where a few burnt-out houses
looked like half-finished stage sets - skeletal frames still
intimately adorned with photographs and china mementoes of family life. In the trick light of dawn, it was as though
she could sense the spirits of the dead flowing round her, or sitting on the broken chairs of abandoned houses - all
those people whose lives had been so suddenly cut off, now silently thronging the streets as if nothing had changed. Roberta shuddered and pulled her coat tighter, quickening her pace.
She passed a derelict house where a child's cot was poised
precariously on the fourth floor. For a moment she thought
she could hear the phantom cries of a child, high-pitched,
helpless, unanswered; her heart turned over as she thought
of Anna, and her gap-toothed smile.
She arrived at last at the doors of the BBC. The gallows
camaraderie of her colleagues was immediately infectious:
every morning was a celebration for surviving another night.
Roberta spent that day cataloguing old discs, the sentimental melodies of a dozen different dance bands. She came upon an old Al Bowlly number, 'The Very Thought of You', intimately crooned in his sweet lyric tenor. She kept the disc aside, and made a point of adding it to the playlist.
I see your face in every flower,
Your eyes in stars above,
It's just the thought of you,
The very thought of you, my love...
In Egypt, later that night, Lewis lay on his back in the
sand and gazed up at a cloudless night sky humming with stars. A wireless was playing from somewhere in the camp, and he thought of his wife as he listened to the song, wondering when he would see her again.
