Book Review – Absolutely & Forever by Rose Tremain

About the Book

Marianne Clifford, 15, only child of a peppery army colonel and his vain wife, Lal, falls helplessly and absolutely for Simon Hurst, 18, whose cleverness and physical beauty suggest that he will go forward into a successful and monied future, helped on by doting parents. But fate intervenes. Simon’s plans are blown off course, and Marianne is forced to bury her dreams of a future together.

Narrating her own story, characterising herself as ignorant and unworthy, Marianne’s telling use of irony and smart thinking gradually suggest to us that she has underestimated her own worth. We begin to believe that―in the end, supported by her courageous Scottish friend, Petronella―she will find the life she never stops craving. But what we can’t envisage is that beneath his blithe exterior, Simon Hurst has been nursing a secret which will alter everything.

Format: Hardback (192 pages) Publisher: Chatto & Windus
Publication date: 21st September 2023 Genre: Historical Fiction

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My Review

Absolutely & Forever is one of the six books on the shortlist for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2024. (You can find a list of all the shortlisted books here along with information about previous shortlisted books and prize winners.)

I have read several of Rose Tremain’s previous books, including The Colour, The Gustav Sonata (shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize in 2017) and more recently Lily. I really enjoyed Lily but, although I loved the first two thirds of The Gustav Sonata, it wasn’t my favourite of that year’s shortlisted books. Unfortunately I feel pretty much the same way about Absolutely & Forever; for me, there are better, far more enjoyable, books on the list.

Absolutely & Forever is described as ‘a piercing short novel of thwarted love and true friendship’ which is right on all three counts. It is a relatively short novel – less than 200 pages – and Marianne’s friendship with Petronella is an engaging element of the book. And it certainly is a story about thwarted love, at least on the part of Marianne who, at the age of fifteen, falls passionately in love with Simon, a boy a few years her senior. It’s an obsession that lasts a lifetime despite mounting evidence that Simon does not feel the same way about her, or at least not sufficiently to overcome the difficulties that stand in the way of a relationship with her.

What does unite them is that, although supposedly the start of the ‘swinging 60s’, they both find themselves in a position where social pressures demand they take a conventional path in life: marriage and family. Marianne’s life is marked by tragedy but also by bad choices. However her eventual realisation that the life she has imagined for herself for so long will never be realised, and that along the way she has missed out on many things, is heartbreaking. I felt sorry for Marianne but it was the devoted Hugo who really captured my heart.

I think my main problem with the book was that I never really understood why Simon should dominate Marianne’s thoughts to such an extent and have such an influence on her life choices. Okay, he is her first love and the person with whom she first explores her sexuality but it’s Marianne who does all the running once he goes off to Oxford and then to Paris. I think Marianne herself sums up my reservations when, responding to a critique of the book she’s writing, she says, ‘If you don’t describe the lost thing to the readers, it’s impossible for them to care about it one way or another’. In this case, I knew what the lost thing was it’s just that the loss of it didn’t break my heart.

Although beautifully written, Absolutely & Forever didn’t enthrall me like it clearly has other readers. This makes it almost certain to win the prize!

In three words: Insightful, emotional, assured
Try something similar: Bonjour, Sophie by Elizabeth Buchan

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About the Author

Rose Tremain’s novels and short stories have been published in thirty countries and have won many awards, including the Orange Prize (The Road Home), the Dylan Thomas Prize (The Colonel’s Daughter and Other Stories), the Whitbread Novel of the Year (Music and Silence), the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Prix Femina in France (Sacred Country), and the South Bank Sky Arts Award (The Gustav Sonata). Her most recent novel is Lily, a Richard and Judy Book Club selection. Rose Tremain was made a CBE in 2007 and a Dame in 2020. She lives in Norfolk and London with the biographer Richard Holmes.

Connect with Rose
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