The Great Lover - Softcover

Dawson, Jill

3.26

674 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0340979097 ISBN 13: 9780340979099

Publisher: Sceptre, 2009

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In the summer of 1909, young Nell Golightly starts work as a housemaid at the Orchard Tea Gardens in Grantchester just when a new lodger arrives - the poet Rupert Brooke, whose boyish good looks are already causing a stir. Nell soon realises that everyone he meets falls in love with him, while he remains flippant and flirtatious. And despite her good sense, even she begins to fall under his spell. What is his secret? Does he prefer men? Is he, in fact, capable of love at all?

With great skill and playfulness, Jill Dawson gives voice to Rupert Brooke himself in this seductive and poignant novel. Revealing a man far more surprising, complex and radical than his romanticised image suggests, The Great Lover powerfully conveys the allure of charisma as it traces the mysterious workings of the human heart.

Jill Dawson is the author of Trick of the Light, Magpie, Fred & Edie, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award and the Orange Prize, Wild Boy and Watch Me Disappear, which was longlisted for the Orange Prize.

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Review:

This is an exceptional book even from the prize-winning Dawson - clever, moving, sexy and with a mesmerising feel for that magical, optimistic, but doomed time just before the Great War (Daily Mail)

Nell and Brooke ponder the appearance of things, in search of hidden realities. Both are sensuous, passionate, sharp-witted and prone to introspection . . . the story that emerges is strong, satisfying and memorable (Helen Dunmore, The Times)

Nell is a wonderful creation: resilient, intelligent and heart-breakingly innocent . . . [Dawson]manages not only an impressive evocation of Brooke's milieu but a compelling reassessment of a poet often dismissed by modern readers . . . most of all, her novel digs Brooke out of that corner of a foreign field that is forever clich� (Time Out)

Not only engaging and seductive, it is also clever, witty and artfully designed (Times Literary Supplement)

Jill Dawson has created a convincing world of huge pathos; a subtle, evocative anti-fairy-tale of doomed youth by one of Britain's most subtle and accomplished writers (Liz Jensen, Waterstone's Books Quarterly)

The Great Lover has many wonderful scenes . . . But it is remarkable principally for its Rupert Brooke, glorious in all his agony and shame, particularly as he sees his sanity slipping away from him . . . this novel shows a rare mastery of materials. Dawson has worked the imaginary character of Nell so seamlessly into the narrative of Brooke's life that Nell seems to belong there. It is difficult to see where the many direct quotations from letters and memoris end and Dawson's imagination begins. (Daily Telegraph)

Book Description:

An imaginative, fascinating novel about the poet Rupert Brooke, showing the complex man behind the romantic image as it tells a poignant story of love and loss

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