‘Rosemary is an outstanding creation’
Sunday Telegraph
‘Bragg writes with a timelessness’
Financial Times
Half-French and with an agile, inquiring mind, Rosemary Lewis cannot help being out of the ordinary in Thurston, the Cumbrian market town where she grows up between the wars. An early, bruising failure in love drives her inwards to the solace of books until she meets Edgar – vigorous, down to earth and determined to win her. Charting their life together, this powerful novel probes with exceptional acuity the heights and tortured depths of a bond that becomes a shackle.
Sunday Telegraph
‘Bragg writes with a timelessness’
Financial Times
Half-French and with an agile, inquiring mind, Rosemary Lewis cannot help being out of the ordinary in Thurston, the Cumbrian market town where she grows up between the wars. An early, bruising failure in love drives her inwards to the solace of books until she meets Edgar – vigorous, down to earth and determined to win her. Charting their life together, this powerful novel probes with exceptional acuity the heights and tortured depths of a bond that becomes a shackle.
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Reviews
Rosemary is an outstanding creation.
Rosemary is drawn with great sympathy and warmth . . . Melvyn Bragg writes with a timelessness that suits his heroine and his theme, that is in tune with the whole story
A vigorous but never crude study of female sexuality, it is distinguished by passages of prose which have precisely the sort of leaping life that Lawrence held up before himself as an ideal all through his career
Words could be used linking Melvyn Bragg with Hardy, Lawrence and Bennett in the Grand Chain: that he belongs there is indisputable
Most attractive of all is this book's openness, its serious intention and a certain ingenuousness in the way it treats its themes.
A strong and solid novel, with a totally convincing figure, at once fallible and admirable, at its centre
It is an extraordinary analysis of the battle between the sexes, and is compelling reading
Rosemary is utterly convincing throughout . . . a character real enough to behave out of character at times and shock the reader as much as she both dismays and excites her husband.