ARTS & CULTURE
CONVERSATIONS ON LOVE
BY NATASHA LUNN
What’s the digital equivalent of ‘well-thumbed’? I highlighted so many passages in my copy of this book that entire pages were coloured in, rendering the exercise almost pointless. I even took photos of my Kindle screen, saving snippets of Lunn’s most poignant words – and intend to buy lots of copies for lots of people when this incredible book is published in the summer. Based on her wildly popular series of email newsletters, Lunn’s Conversations on Love – like all brilliant works – has a simple concept at heart. The writer questions celebrities, experts and those with first-hand knowledge of love on their experiences of the much-sought connection, from parenting through to platonic relationships. She asks: how do we find love? How do we sustain it? And how do we survive when we lose it? This book is beautiful, completely reassuring and tear-provokingly insightful. It’s a perfectly timed read for anyone establishing their post-pandemic priorities. “Beautiful, reassuring and insightful”
ANOTHER LIFE BY JODIE CHAPMAN
whipping us back to the cold, hard present, before returning us once again to filtered recollections of what once was, slowly bringing the characters’ tales together. Nick turns each memory over in his mind, handling them like precious stones, and looking for new facets through which to understand events. At one point he says of a day with Anna that the memories were “like a movie montage. Not quite real, a little cliche, all the best bits. Maybe the words weren’t spoken exactly like I remember, but you get a sense of it, and what really do we ever possess of another human being but a sense of them?” This sweeping, cinematic love story is perfect to lose yourself in on a warm summer’s day – bring tissues.
Fans of David Nicholls and Hanya Yanagihara will fall completely head over heels for the entwined tales of Anna, Nick and his brother Sal – beautifully rendered and weighed down by tragedy in this extraordinarily well-crafted debut novel. The opening chapter starts us off with hand-to-mouth heartbreak – and the story’s intensity only builds further. Chapman has a brilliant talent for creating vignettes, neatly bringing elements together like a skilled film director. You really get the sense that every tiny aspect has been thoughtfully considered, readers instantly connecting with her characters, snapping their desires into perfect focus. The narrative jumps around in time, giving us faded, fond memories of the past before
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C A M B S E D I T I O N . C O . U K
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