Imprint
- Sceptre
- Sceptre
Fiction, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
A revelatory novel about the poet Rupert Brooke from the Orange and Whitbread-shortlisted author of FRED AND EDIE.
In the summer of 1909, seventeen-year-old Nell Golightly is the new maid at the Orchard Tea Gardens in Cambridgeshire when Rupert Brooke moves in as a lodger. Famed for his looks and flouting of convention, the young poet captures the hearts of men and women alike, yet his own seems to stay intact. Even Nell, despite her good sense, begins to fall for him. What is his secret?
This captivating novel gives voice to Rupert Brooke himself in a tale of mutual fascination and inner turmoil, set at a time of great social unrest. Revealing a man far more complex and radical than legend suggests, it powerfully conveys the allure and curse of charisma.
Praise for The Great Lover
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Moving, intelligent, beautifully written and hugely enjoyable - Sunday Times
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Dawson brilliantly evokes Brooke's volatility, his inner dissolution and ultimate breakdown. - Independent
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Strong, satisfying and memorable - Helen Dunmore, The Times
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Not only engaging and seductive, it is also clever, witty and artfully designed - Times Literary Supplement
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An exceptional book even from the prize-winning Dawson - clever, moving, sexy and with a mesmerising feel for that magical, optimistic, but doomed time just before the Great War - Daily Mail
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Nell is a wonderful creation: resilient, intelligent and heart-breakingly innocent . . . [Dawson]manages not only an impressive evocation of Brooke's milieu but a compelling reassessment of a poet often dismissed by modern readers . . . most of all, her novel digs Brooke out of that corner of a foreign field that is forever clich? - Time Out
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Jill Dawson has created a convincing world of huge pathos; a subtle, evocative anti-fairy-tale of doomed youth by one of Britain's most subtle and accomplished writers - Liz Jensen, Waterstone's Books Quarterly
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The Great Lover has many wonderful scenes . . . But it is remarkable principally for its Rupert Brooke, glorious in all his agony and shame, particularly as he sees his sanity slipping away from him . . . this novel shows a rare mastery of materials. Dawson has worked the imaginary character of Nell so seamlessly into the narrative of Brooke's life that Nell seems to belong there. It is difficult to see where the many direct quotations from letters and memories end and Dawson's imagination begins. - Daily Telegraph
Jill Dawson
Jill Dawson was born in Durham. She is the author of three novels: Trick of the Light, Magpie and Fred & Edie, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award and the Orange Prize and translated into several languages. She is also an award-winning poet and has edited five anthologies, including Wild Ways: New Stories about Women on the Road (co-edited with Margo Daly), The Virago Book of Wicked Verse and the recent Gas and Air: Tales of Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond. She taught at Amherst College and is currently the Creative Writing Fellow at University of East Anglia in Norwich. She lives in the Fens with her partner and two sons.
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