PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
Louisa Young was a journalist for some years. Her first book was A Great Task of Happiness (1995), the life of Kathleen Bruce, her grandmother, the sculptor and wife of Scott of the Antarctic. She followed that with her Egyptian trilogy of novels: Baby Love (which was listed for the Orange Prize), Desiring Cairo and Tree of Pearls. They were followed by The Book of the Heart, a cultural history of our most symbolic organ. She has also published a trilogy of children’s novels, written with her ten-year-old daughter under the pseudonym Zizou Corder. Her most recent novel, The Heroes’ Welcome is a follow-up to the 2011 bestseller My Dear, I Wanted to Tell You, which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2011 and the Wellcome Book Prize, was a Richard and Judy Book Club choice, and the first ever winner of the Galaxy Audiobook of the Year. She lives in London with her daughter.
'A beautiful book. Insanely romantic and utterly convincing' Julie Myerson 'A wonderful novel, charming and surprising, filled with loss and its triumphant opposites' Susie Boyt 'A wonderful and inventive novel, sorrowful and hopeful in equal measure. It was a true pleasure to read' Miranda Cowley Heller 'A skilfully calibrated love-after-death tale, it's a four course feast of hearts broken, hearts mended, of songs, laughter, old regrets and fresh desire, that demands a major film deal' Patrick Gale 'A tale of two love stories with a supernatural twist, Twelve Months and a Day is poignant and sad as well as funny and beautifully written and imagined. What if our beloveds lived on as ghosts and watched us grieve, what if they never really leave us, and what if some of these ghosts even meet? You will fall in love again as you read this clever book by a writer who understands grief. Hugely engaging and readable. A bitter-sweet pang in my heart as it ended. A page-turner' Monique Roffey 'Louisa Young is the great chronicler of romantic love and the pain of its loss' Linda Grant 'What a writer. A raw and beautiful exposition on grief and loss but so beautifully earthed in the everyday. Terrific' Elizabeth Buchan
