First Love

A raw and engrossing portrait of familial and marital dysfunction by ＂one of Britain’s most original young writers＂ (The Observer).

Neve is a writer in her mid-thirties married to an older man, Edwyn. For now they are in a place of relative peace, but their past battles have left scars. As Neve recalls the decisions that led her to this marriage, she tells of other loves and other debts, from her bullying father and her self-involved mother to a musician who played her and a series of lonely flights from place to place.

Drawing the reader into the battleground of her relationship, Neve spins a story of helplessness and hostility, an ongoing conflict in which both husband and wife have played a part. But is this, nonetheless, also a story of love?

Gwendoline Riley’s debut novel Cold Water was published when she was still at university and won a Betty Trask Award for first time novelists. Riley is also the author of Sick Notes, Joshua Spassky (which won the Somerset Maugham Award and was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize), and Opposed Positions. She lives in London.