Gwendoline Riley

Rendered in dazzling prose, First Love is an account of the relationship between two catastrophically ill-suited people walking a precarious line between relative calm and explosive confrontation.

A Novel

First Love

Celine

I can't think of you.. he was saying, I don't think I can think of you...outside of the context of- loving you?'

david

azliana aziz

i feel like i got vomited on all over myself after i was done with this. 

i couldn't find the humor that 90% of critics keep banging on, it was all relentlessly bleak and malevolent. 
the saving grace was, Riley's potent prose that was very reminiscent of Rachel Cusk, Lauren Geoff etc.

“Don’t pet him. Don’t act like a baby. Don’t be a cat.”

iva moore

A staple for those of us cohabitating

“Don’t pet him. Don’t act like a baby. Don’t be a cat.”

'A singular, devastating journey into the ungovernable reaches of the heart' Observer SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2017 Neve is a writer in her mid-30s married to an older man, Edwyn. For now they are in a place of relative peace, but their past battles have left scars. As Neve recalls the decisions that led her to this marriage, she tells of other loves and other debts, from her bullying father and her self-involved mother to a musician who played her and a series of lonely flights from place to place. Drawing the reader into the battleground of her relationship, Neve spins a story of helplessness and hostility, an ongoing conflict in which both husband and wife have played a part. But is this, nonetheless, also a story of love?