Readers' rating:
Published Aug 2009
224 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
It opens in a small Irish town in the 1960s with the accidental death of a teenage boy who commits one final, heartrending act of love.
Then: three brilliantly realized voices—the boy's mother, his older sister, a German expat neighbor—speak the story into existence. Their descriptions of the aftermath of the boy's death mix with meditations and conversations about other loves tested, twisted, or lost—in the past and forward, through the next forty years—as they struggle to make sense of tragedy: the boy's, their own, their countries'.
In Sissy, the mother, we see how the desperate love of her husband and the delicate bravery of her daughter lure her away from her profound grief. In Thomas—“the German” to his neighbors—we see a man who knows all too well that "after a tragedy, many survivors are lost." In Olivia, the boy’s sister, we see someone who remains intent on embracing the "weapon of memory."
These voices speak with piercing emotion and intellect and, in Josephine Hart’s deft hands, they describe whole lives. Moment by moment we come to understand how these men and women are shaped in essential ways by the boy's death, by their inherent characters, and by what they learn from one another about loss and love—and what it takes to bear them both.
"Poignant, engrossing, and deftly realized, this is a more nuanced read than the author's still excellent Damage and should be considered by most fiction readers." - Library Journal
"What's wrong with loving someone for life? Even when they are dead?" - Hart produces her least mannered, most moving novel to date." - Kirkus Reviews
"Unfortunately, revelations ... feel rushed, while the characters' proclivities for introspection do little to create narrative urgency." - Publishers Weekly
"In this compelling and remarkable book, Hart has written a moving lament for exile . . . The novel's opening is a tour de force . . . There are echoes of Beckett and Joyce in Hart's writing, especially in the brilliantly fractured syntax." - Times Literary Supplement
"Deeply moving ...It packs a punch far beyond its size .... An uncompromising tale that explores grief, redemption and memory." - Irish Independent
"A bleak tale, beautifully told, about the one burden we must all, as human beings, survive . . . Hart takes us to a place that, for most of us, has hitherto been both unimagined and unimaginable." - The Times
"Hart's dialogue is extraordinary, blending poetry and naturalism like the great Irish playwrights . . . This book is sui generis." - The Independent
"A brave novel .... Hart's [characters] live beyond the confines of even her fiery and elegant prose and are impossible, once encountered, to forget." - The Guardian
This information about The Truth About Love was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Josephine Hart is the best-selling author of Damage, Sin, Oblivion, The Stillest Day, and The Reconstructionist. Her work has been translated into twenty-seven languages. She lives in London with her husband, Maurice Saatchi, and their two sons.
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