The Small Hours

Description

Harriet Goodman, brave, wry and handsome, is determined to triumph no matter what. With a decade of therapy under her belt and a new large inheritance, it seems there is nothing she cannot achieve. When she finds herself in charge of a school full of precocious little girls, rich in everything but care, she vows to make their childhoods amongst the happiest ever spent. For everyone knows that early years passed in delightful ways can you set you up for life. But can this ambitious new departure spill some retrospective sweetness onto Harriet's own harsh beginnings, or better still cancel them out altogether? Will the family she's estranged from ever grant her the recognition she craves? Written with deep psychological insight and coal-black humour, The Small Hours is a stunning meditation on love, self-love and forgiveness, and their shadowy opposites.

Promotion info

A wonderful and startling novel about the havoc and pain, healing and love that comes with growing up in a family. Like A.L. Kennedy and Ali Smith, Susie Boyt is an exquisite writer, thoughtful and truly original.

Reviews

The Small Hours excites with refined delights ... Boyt's economical prose remains elegantly polished, her descriptions of the subtleties of psychotherapy spine-tingling ... A meaty yet accessible novel possessing great psychological rigour -- Lucy Beresford Sunday Times Boyt is a compassionate chronicler of the human heart ... The point of this novel is not whether your dreams succeed or fail, but whether you're still willing to risk having dreams at all. In Harriet Mansfield, Boyt has drawn a character whose moral and emotional courage is both convincing and heartbreaking -- Rebecca Abrams Financial Times The Small Hours is an absolute gem of a novel: exquisite, diamond-bright and lacerating to the hardest of hearts -- Amanda Craig Literary Review

Author description

Susie Boyt is the author of four acclaimed novels and a memoir, My Judy Garland Life, which was serialised on Radio 4 and will be staged at the Nottingham Playhouse in spring 2013. Since 2002 she has written a weekly column about art and life for the Financial Times. She lives in London with her family.