The Romantic
Written by Barbara Gowdy
- Longlisted
- The Man Booker Prize 2003
- Published by Harper Perennial
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Barbara Gowdy unravels romance through the misadventures of the incurable Louise Kirk, who flies to love again and again like a moth at a lamp
At the age of 10, Louise Kirk decides to fall in love. Furiously. First, she falls in love with her magnificent new neighbour, the operatic and exotic Mrs Richter. Then, within the year, she falls for Mrs Richter’s brilliant son Abel. Distracting him from his attentive study of everything around him - the constellations, the moths, the music - proves quite a struggle. But before long Abel finds he loves Louise ‘too much’. A dozen years later, Abel is gone and Louise is devastated…
Barbara Gowdy
The Canadian writer’s novels and short-stories combine the strange and the everyday. She was longlisted for The Romantic, her tale of a lifelong, and unrequited, fixation
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