The New Life

The New Life
Tom Crewe
RRP:
NZ$ 55.00
Our Price:
NZ$ 44.00
Hardback
h240 x 162mm - 384pg
12 Jan 2023 UK
International import eta 7-19 days
9781784744694
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9781784744700 UK Trade Paperback $29.60

An addictive read from a major new writer - and a riveting novel about forbidden sex in late Victorian England A magnificent and daring novel of unconventional love and new ways to live, set in fin de si cle LondonIn the summer of 1894, John Addington and Henry Ellis decide to write a revolutionary book. They will argue that homosexuality is not a perversion, and that the law - which makes all sexual activity between men a crime - is wrong and must be changed. Such a book has never been written before, and to publish it will be to wage war on conventional morality. John has been married to Catherine for twenty-five years, and is the father of three daughters, but has spent his life trying to accept and understand his desires for men. John meets and falls in love with Frank, a young working-class printer. Henry is married to Edith, who has recently met and fallen in love with Angelica, a young woman who wants Edith all for herself. These two Victorian marriages, each altered irrevocably by the unanticipated introduction of a third person, are stalked by guilt and shame. They are also shaped and put under pressure by new ideas about sex, social equality, the role of women and the right to deviate from the norm. When Oscar Wilde is arrested and put on trial for homosexuality in the spring of 1895, John and Henry have to choose whether or not to go ahead with their book. Is now the best or the worst moment to make the argument that sex between men should not be a crime? Faced with the consequences of their choice, they and the people around them are forced to consider another question- what price is worth paying for a new way of living? The New Life - very loosely based on the experiences of John Addington Symonds and Havelock Ellis, co-authors of the first book in English about homosexuality - captures a generation in the process of discovering the nature and limits of personal freedom, struggling to create a better world as the twentieth century comes into view.
The New Life is filled with nuance and tenderness, steeped in the atmosphere of late nineteenth century London, a world on the brink of social and sexual change. Tom Crewe' s brilliant novel dramatizes the relationship between the visionary and the brave, charting the lives of men and women who inspired not only political progress but an entire new way of living and loving. -- Colm Toibin Electrifying. Tom Crewe' s forensic love of the physical puts the body back into history and makes the past a living, changing place -- Anne Enright [Tom Crewe is] a very fine new writer -- Kate Atkinson
TOM CREWE was born in Middlesbrough in 1989. He has a PhD in nineteenth century British history from the University of Cambridge. Since 2015, he has been an editor at the London Review of Books, to which he contributes essays on politics, art, history and fiction. The New Life is his first novel. Crewe says: ' This is the book I knew I wanted to write long before I actually wrote it. I hope it reveals to readers an unfamiliar Victorian England that will surprise and provoke, inhabited by a generation in the process of discovering the nature and limits of personal freedom, struggling to create a better world as the twentieth century comes into view. '

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