Handpicked recommendations to other books that have a similar writing style or theme to The First Time

Elegantly written and ferociously paced, emotionally nuanced and morally complex - marks the emergence of a prodigiously gifted new novelist.

Elegantly detailed yet full of emotional suspense, often as comic as it is sad, this is a glorious triptych about how we learn to live beyond incurable grief and betrayals of the heart, and how family ties, both those we're born into and those we make, can offer us redemption and joy.