Violets

I loved this moving, graceful novel, which writes through the years with a rare deftness of touch. Violets has a compelling, quiet power all the way to its exquisitely affecting end -- Megan Hunter, author of The Harpy A beautiful, inventive, and deeply moving book about the secrets and sacrifices women make on their journeys to motherhood. Through lucid, lyrical prose, unafraid of the body and all its messiness and longing, the stories of these two courageous Violets, conjuring a child into being in the last days of wartime, captured my heart and imagination. -- Liz Berry I was deeply moved by Violets, a stunning and original portrayal of womanhood and life's many iterations. Written in pristine prose, it reminded me of the possibilities of language, of the beauty, heartbreak and extraordinary courage found in everyday life -- Elizabeth Macneal Violets is a novel of taut symmetry and dissonance. War, marriage, affairs, death, childbirth: all are here, dissolving the gender divisions we still impose on these subjects. Alex Hyde's prose is rhythmically acute and emotionally layered. This is a subtle and daring book. -- Margo Jefferson Loosely based on the adoption of the author's father, this lyrical, affecting debut weaves together the stories of the two women involved...In stripped-back prose that focuses on the women's interior lives, this notable debut is one for fans of Max Porter and Megan Hunter. -- Alice O'Keeffe, Editor's Choice * Bookseller * A story of motherhood and loss told in lean, spare prose * Bookseller * Hypnotic... its accumulative power will have you sobbing by the end * Evening Standard * Breathtaking... powerful and poignant * Sunday Post * Graceful... inventive... Babies - unborn, unwanted, mourned, impossible to conceive - link both Violets in a narrative that is skilfully progressed over the course of this quietly surprising book * The Irish Times * A tender meditation on motherhood...lyrical ... Hyde has found a way to make the past speak presciently to our times while also maintaining a playful relationship to a story that becomes unexpectedly moving, warm-hearted despite its flinty poetic prose -- Lara Feigel * Guardian * [An] assured debut... Hyde's ingenious plotting is matched by the inventiveness of her buoyant, verse-like, subtly rhyming prose -- Stephanie Cross * Daily Mail * Violets is a touching tribute, deftly written, to all women left struggling in similar situations -- Susie Mesure * Spectator * An intricately composed and thoroughly corporeal portrait of the intertwined lives of two women during the war. Hyde is clearly a writer of talent and ambition: Violets suggests a glittering career ahead -- Alex Preston * Observer * [W]onderfully lyrical and insightful * i Newsletter * A brilliantly constructed novel that says more by saying less... the poetic heartbeat of the narrative means that this is very much more than a partially fictionalised family memoir -- Bill Borrows * Radio Times * Short, expressionist... profound... * Financial Times *