The Kindness

by Polly Samson

Overview

He followed her eyes skyward to a bird that was falling, turning and turning, like a heart that had leapt free. It fell, and as it did it became a falcon. He was transfixed.

Julian's fall begins the moment he sets eyes on Julia.

Julia is married and eight years his senior; he is a gifted English student, a life of academia ahead. Ignoring warnings from family and friends, they each give up all they have to be together. Their new life in London offers immense happiness, especially after their longed-for daughter Mira is born.

When Julian hears that Firdaws, his adored boyhood home, is for sale, he sets out to recreate a lost paradise for his new family. Once again, love blinds him. It is only when Mira becomes terrifyingly ill that it is impossible for Julia to conceal from him the explosive secret that she has been keeping at the heart of their lives.

Lyrical, haunting and exquisitely rendered, Polly Samson's second novel explores a deception that comes wrapped as a gift, a betrayal that is clothed in kindness, and asks if we can ever truly trust another. The result is an unforgettable story of love, grief, betrayal, and reconciliation, masterfully plotted and beautifully told.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781632860873
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	07/21/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	NOOK Book
Pages:	304
File size:	825 KB

About the Author

Polly Samson is the author of two highly acclaimed story collections and a novel, Out of the Picture, which was shortlisted for the Authors' Club First Novel Award. Her most recent linked story collection, Perfect Lives, was a Sunday Times Fiction Choice of the Year and was read on BBC Radio 4. She has been shortlisted for the VS Pritchett Memorial Prize and The Edge Hill Short Story Prize. She recently wrote the introduction to Daphne du Maurier's The Doll: Short Stories. She has written lyrics for three bestselling albums and was a Costa Book Awards judge in 2007. Polly Samson lives in Brighton.

@PollySamson
Polly Samson is the author of two short story collections and two previous novels. Her work has been shortlisted for numerous prizes, translated into several languages and has been dramatised on BBC Radio 4. Her novel The Kindness was named Book of the Year by The Times and Observer. She has written lyrics for four Number One albums, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
pollysamson.com @PollySamson

Editorial Reviews

05/11/2015
Deception poisons two marriages in Samson’s (Perfect Lives) convoluted he said/she said tale of betrayal and acceptance. Julian, a gifted 21-year-old writer, first relates the tortured unraveling of his life with Julia, the older beauty for whom he falls helplessly in love after her own marriage to a brutish abuser implodes. He and a pregnant Julia ultimately move to Julian’s boyhood home, scraping by with his modestly successful books, until their baby daughter’s illness exposes the secret Julia has been hiding. In Julia’s narration, we learn of her attraction to Julian’s boyhood friend, Karl, the lie she’s willing to hide to protect Julian, and the betrayal she ultimately suffers. “You’d think it would be hard to remove every trace of yourself from a life, but really, it isn’t,” Julia says. Their daughter, Mira, doesn’t escape unscathed from this collection of sullen adults. Samson, creates a moving portrait of a family torn by the stress of a sick child—and a sensuous, lyrical account of a failed marriage. (July)

Publishers Weekly

Sumptuous.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Samson, creates a moving portrait of a family torn by the stress of a sick child—and a sensuous, lyrical account of a failed marriage.” —Publishers Weekly

“With its sensuous prose and blend of romance, disappointment, amazing sex, and exquisite domestic interiors, the novel hovers somewhere between conventional commercial fiction and something rather more ambitious.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Beautifully written, filled with warmth and humor, The Kindness is a powerful novel exploring the complexities of love and the nature of human relationships.” —Booklist

“A haunting story of pleasure, disappointment, and family, one that immerses you into their journey.” —BlogCritics.org

“This is elegant, witty writing, informed throughout by generosity and wise perceptiveness. Dealing with many kinds of love, and with misunderstanding, betrayal, grief and forgiveness, the novel dares to posit, ultimately, the possibility of redemption. It is a book to cherish, to recommend, to return to—and not to lend anyone.” —Financial Times

“In addition to displaying assured prose, Samson's book is precisely plotted.” —The Minneapolis Star Tribune

"Haunting . . . A compellingly plotted account of the corrosive power a secret has to destroy the happiest of families." - Daily Mail on BEST BOOKS ABOUT FAMILY SECRETS

"Addictive, cleverly structured and intriguing relationship story of lies and flawed communication." - Summer Book Choice, Sunday Times

From the Publisher

2015-04-28
A tricky tale of deceptions—some well-meant—and infidelities winds together an attractive woman's fractured love life and an open-hearted man's intense attachment to a child. Passions run deep in noted British writer Samson's U.S. debut, a novel which opens with the brutal end of Julia's marriage to Chris and her escape into the arms of her younger lover, gifted literature student Julian. Julian will drop out of college to support Julia when they discover she's pregnant, though a miscarriage follows. Julian's subsequent life as a writer, Julia's as a landscape designer, their move to an idyllic cottage called Firdaws where Julian spent his childhood, the birth of their daughter, Mira, and the child's sudden, terrible illness are just a few of the ensuing events, narrated by Samson in four acts spanning 23 years and conveyed from various perspectives. While the first and last sections are brief, the middle two are expansive, the second verging on baggy, allowing the author ample space for a looping narrative that repeatedly tantalizes the reader about events and expectations, moving back and forth within the story's timeline and delivering the facts in sly drips at unexpected intervals. The technique is provocative, as are some of the plot swerves—a car crash; a withdrawal into silence for many years; an assumption of adultery—all of which play crucial roles. With its sensuous prose and blend of romance, disappointment, amazing sex, and exquisite domestic interiors, the novel hovers somewhere between conventional commercial fiction and something rather more ambitious. Broken relationships and damaging silences, presented from deliberately misleading angles, add up to a readable, clever, teasing, but naggingly overcomplicated story.

Kirkus Reviews

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