First Love (Granta Shorts) - Softcover

Riley, Gwendoline

Softcover

ISBN 10: 180351356X ISBN 13: 9781803513560

Publisher: Granta Books, 2026

Synopsis

'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?

About this title

About the Author

Gwendoline Riley is the author of The Palm House, My Phantoms, which was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, and First Love, which was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Literature, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Gordon Burn Prize, and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, as well as Cold Water, Sick Notes, Joshua Spassky and Opposed Positions. In 2018, the Times Literary Supplement named her as one of the twenty best British and Irish novelists working today.

From the Back Cover

INCLUDED IN THE GRANTA SHORTS LIST: Gwendoline Riley's critically-acclaimed breakout novel is a blackly comic portrait of familial and marital dysfunction.

Edition details

• Publisher: Granta Books
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 180351356X
• ISBN 13: 9781803513560
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176