Top

The Hand That First Held Mine

On sale

4th September 2012

Price: £12.99

Select a format

Selected: Audiobook Downloadable / ISBN-13: 9780755399307
See All

Disclosure: If you buy products using the retailer buttons above, we may earn a commission from the retailers you visit.

Winner of the 2010 Costa Novel Award and a Sunday Times bestseller, THE HAND THAT FIRST HELD MINE by Maggie O’Farrell is a gorgeously written story of love and motherhood from the author of THIS MUST BE THE PLACE.

When the sophisticated Innes Kent turns up on her doorstep, Lexie Sinclair realises she cannot wait any longer for her life to begin, and leaves for London. There, at the heart of the 1950s Soho art scene, she carves out a new life. In the present day, Elina and Ted are reeling from the difficult birth of their first child. Elina struggles to reconcile the demands of motherhood with her sense of herself as an artist, and Ted is disturbed by memories of his own childhood that don’t tally with his parents’ version of events. As Ted begins to search for answers, an extraordinary portrait of two women is revealed, separated by fifty years, but connected in ways that neither could ever have expected.

(P)2012 Headline Publishing Group Ltd

Reviews

Observer
'O'Farrell has a remarkable ability to convey the texture of human emotion with precision. In THE HAND THAT FIRST HELD MINE, she also demonstrates a masterful gift for storytelling'
Daily Mail
'Like Daphne du Maurier before her, Maggie O'Farrell writes books designed to stir up the female subconscious and bring our most primal fears to the surface... this book will leave your stomach in knots'
Scotland on Sunday
'The journey this novel invites us on is wonderful, involving time travel, heartache, elation, confusion, freedom, nostalgia and art'
Literary Review
'Genuinely unputdownable... evidence of her place as one of Britain's most engaging contemporary novelists'