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Absolutely and Forever

An electrifying love story from the Sunday Times bestselling author of Lily

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Absolutely and Forever

By: Rose Tremain
Narrated by: Jane McDowell
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Brought to you by Penguin.

A piercing story of thwarted love and true friendship from one of our greatest living writers

Marianne Clifford, 15, only child of a peppery army colonel and his vain wife, Lal, falls helplessly and absolutely for Simon Hurst, 18, whose cleverness and physical beauty suggest that he will go forward into a successful and monied future, helped on by doting parents. But fate intervenes. Simon's plans are blown off course, and Marianne is forced to bury her dreams of a future together.

Narrating her own story, characterising herself as ignorant and unworthy, Marianne's telling use of irony and smart thinking gradually suggest to us that she has underestimated her own worth. We begin to believe that - in the end, supported by her courageous Scottish friend, Petronella - she will find the life she never stops craving. But what we can't envisage is that beneath his blithe exterior, Simon Hurst has been nursing a secret which will alter everything.

©2023 Rose Tremain (P)2023 Penguin Audio

 Coming of Age Family Life Fiction Genre Fiction Historical Fiction Literary Fiction World Literature
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Critic Reviews

PRAISE FOR ABSOLUTELY AND FOREVER:
'Stunningly beautiful and deeply moving'
A perfect Tremain novel… English, dark and yearning… remarkable… [Tremain shows] us the things that make every human life extraordinary
Funny, piercing and singular… this gorgeous, pitch-perfect novel is a world unto itself… it’s powerful, too… I can’t fathom the reason why you wouldn’t rush straight out to buy it
A slim, funny, elegantly breezy coming-of-age story
A complex tale of becoming that’s moving, evocative and mesmerising in its acuity
An electrifying, word-perfect tale… Gently devastating, devastatingly beautiful
An engrossing character study ... But it is also a study in tolerance and kindness, and as such is more relevant to today’s reader than it might first seem
Written with piercing clarity and gentle humour, Absolutely And Forever is a study of the messiness of human relationships, the significance of secrets unspoken and the impact of the choices we make
This is a book about the comic, painful, life-long search for human understanding. Not a word is wasted; not a phrase trite. It is mesmerising, masterly and profoundly moving
Rose Tremain… is back on form with Absolutely and Forever
All stars
Most relevant
Tremain continues to surprise. This short novel takes us deeply into a life anchored to a false idea and the gradual emergence from that life. Not a wasted word. It casts a razor-sharp eye on the 60s without a hint of nostalgia. It is among her best, which is saying something.

Small in word count, big in every other way

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You can’t get through this book fast enough. Although only recently published, and very much a girl’s coming-of-age novel, it reads with the firmness and razor-sharp dialogue of a 1950s spy writer. Not a word too many.

It’s a complex tale, and at times you may feel the storyline edging toward sentimentality. And sentimentality, of course, is the death knell of most literature. But somehow the novel sidesteps that trap. I'll borrow the words of Mark Haddon - it doesn’t happen often, but what moves me most profoundly is the sublime, sublimely articulated - that feeling that language has taken you beyond the boundary of language. There are moments here that come very close to that.

The nicknames -“Yetty” and “Anthracite” - sound whimsical enough on the page, but when spoken aloud in the dialogue they cut surprisingly deep. And the dialogue really is the heart of the book. Jane McDowell is the perfect narrator.

Marianne herself can be irritatingly unhinged at times. You almost want to shake her and say, 'get yourself together, woman'. But the conversations are word-perfect, and feel genuine.

Hugo says to her at one point: “One of the things I love about you, Marianne, is that I absolutely never know what you’re going to say next.”

And by the end, you may find yourself feeling exactly the same way - falling a little in love with this devastatingly beautiful story.

Devastatingly Beautiful

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