True Love

Susan Midalia's Review 

I haven’t read English author Paddy Crewe’s acclaimed and bestselling debut novel My Name is Yip. I must also confess that when I first noticed his second novel in the Lane Bookshop, I wasn’t enamoured with its vacuous title. But the novel’s opening pages made me think that Crewe’s use of the cliché “true love” - the stuff of rom coms, advice columns and Hallmarks Greetings Cards – was deliberately, profoundly subversive. The story begins not with the cloying sweetness of romance, or even the obstacles to its fulfilment, but with vivid descriptions of an impoverished community’s displacement in the post-industrial north of England. And while the main source of love in this bleak landscape is between a widowed father and his two young children, it soon becomes a story of abandonment, as daughter Keely struggles to survive when her father chooses to leave. Fuelled by anger and grief, Keely turns to drink and anonymous, promiscuous sex to find the comfort and consolation she craves. But counterpointing the darkness of such material is the novel’s use of inventive, luminous prose, and its refusal to judge a lost and lonely young woman.

The second section of the novel cuts to a completely new set of characters, centred on an agonisingly awkward Finn, whose mother’s whereabouts have long remained unknown. Relentlessly bullied at school and raised by caring but uncomprehending grandparents, Finn unexpectedly finds a sense of purpose and companionship as the lead singer in a successful local rock band. But this promise of new beginnings is destroyed when his best friend in the band leaves him behind on a tour. Doubly abandoned, Finn, like Keely, sinks into self-doubt and despair.

And then these two damaged young people meet by accident. Sex becomes a marvel of new and delicious pleasure; there is also genuine intimacy and mutual care. The love that develops between Keely and Finn is shown as achingly tender, mutually attentive and seemingly destined to endure. But the Cinderella ‘happily ever after’ nature of their romance – already subtly signalled by its beginning, when Finn finds Keely’s lost shoe – begins to fracture when Keely accidentally falls pregnant. These two found souls begin to lose one another, and themselves, as the pressure of responsibility pulls them apart, then returns them to their sense of isolation. The novel is particularly skilled at creating the inner lives of these two young characters: their apprehensions and longings, their disillusionment and naivete, their seemingly helpless need to hurt one another as a means of protecting themselves from further pain. True Love also depicts the importance of the influence of social class in both the past and present: the value of work, education and reading through which young people might forge a better future.  

Fast forward three years and the lives of Keely and Finn have been radically changed. What happens next is rendered deeply poignant and unbearably tense. The final section of the novel asks us to question that cliché of true love: what we might be prepared to give and lose as we grow older, consumed by regret while hoping to create a more meaningful, emotionally sustaining life.

In the tradition of the romance genre, I had to stop myself from rushing to the end to find out if love would ultimately prevail. Whether set in the dump heap of a caravan park, ordinary suburbia, a wild coast or a graveyard, this is a story for all times and places. This intelligent, beautifully written and compassionate novel, currently on order at the Lane, left me awash with tears. One of my picks for the year.

Publisher's Review 

From the author of My Name is Yip, listed for five major literary awards, comes a novel that explores the question at the very centre of our experience - what does it mean to love?

What does it mean to love and be loved?

It is the 1980s and Finn and Keely are growing up in the North East of England.

Keely is a fighter. Even in the face of loss she strives to seek connection, but finds that she's not always searching in the right places.

Finn is quiet, sensitive, distant. He spends much of his time alone, yet deep down he wants to discover the thrill of relating to others.

When the two finally meet, everything is changed. Love - with all of its attendant joys and costs - is thrust upon them, and each must decide if they will bend or break under its pressure. True Love is a story of the trials of youth, the bonds of family and friendship, and of how much we are willing to risk to have ourselves be seen.

'Empathetic, honest, compelling. I'll read anything Paddy Crewe writes.' - Bonnie Garmus, author of Lessons in Chemistry

'True Love had me from its gorgeous, lyrical opening to its transcendent final pages. Paddy Crewe is an exceptionally gifted writer.' - Louise Kennedy, author of Trespasses