The New Life

I loved this book – Zadie SmithCompletely engrossed by this fascinating story of gay life in the London of the 1890’s. Beautifully written with fantastically complicated characters – Graham Norton‘Tom Crewe inhabits the minds, lives and bodies of his visionary late-nineteenth century characters with almost eerie precision and intensity. The result is subtle, sexy and beautifully crafted - a wonderful book’ * Sarah Waters *It’s wonderful when a book lives up to all the praise and prizes. A fascinating story, so confidently told, with thoroughly real characters and agonising moral compromises. Brilliant! – Clare Chambers‘Clever and kind, The New Life is a book of wonderful generosity and compassion’ * Alice Winn, author of In Memoriam *It is a pleasure to discover a young novelist with such a wise sensibility - and also, one who can construct such convincing characters. * Sunday Times *This is a corker… one of the literary debuts of the year * The Times, Books to Look Out For 2023 *‘Extraordinary in its depiction of reform and liberalism in Britain in the late-1800s’ * Jonathan Bailey, star of Bridgerton *The New Life is filled with nuance and tenderness, steeped in the atmosphere of late nineteenth century London, a world on the brink of social and sexual change. Tom Crewe’s brilliant novel dramatizes the relationship between the visionary and the brave, charting the lives of men and women who inspired not only political progress but an entire new way of living and loving. – Colm Tóibín‘A beautifully written debut set in Victorian London… some of the best writing on desire I’ve read’ * Douglas Stuart *[Tom Crewe is] a very fine new writer – Kate AtkinsonElectrifying. Tom Crewe’s forensic love of the physical puts the body back into history and makes the past a living, changing place – Anne EnrightAn excellent debut … It’s extraordinary to think that this impeccably crafted, lyrically phrased and muscular book is Crewe’s first … a brilliant evocation of the radical politics of turn-of-the-century Britain * Michael Donkor, Guardian *Emotionally vivid and erotically charged, The New Life brilliantly reveals a ‘seething and boiling’ world of ‘loneliness and anger and lust,’ as Crewe’s complicated, compelling protagonists battle the restrictive mores of the day * Daily Mail *Powerful themes and lovingly polished prose … a fictional debut of rare quality and promise * Daily Telegraph *Intense and precise … It is refreshing to find any contemporary novel, let alone a debut, which is first and foremost one of ideas * Financial Times *[An] excellent new novel * Independent *’[An] intricate and finely crafted debut novel … The New Life brims with intelligence and insight, impressed with all the texture (and fog) of fin de siècle London’ * New York Times *‘Crewe distinguishes himself both as novelist and as historian … He has, more unusually, found a prose that can accommodate everything from the lofty to the romantic and the shamelessly sexy’ * New Yorker *A once-in-a-generation talent – Johanna Thomas-Corr, chair of judges - Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year AwardUnflinchingly bold … Crewe’s language is striking in its originality, his protagonists are colourful and passionate, and their principles are brilliantly drawn * i paper *Sexy, cerebral and moving * Mail on Sunday *‘Atmospheric … Extraordinary … Crewe’s taut prose is shot through with descriptive vividness’ – James Cahill * TLS *Exhilarating … An adroit novel of ethics * New Statesman *‘Lyrical, piercing … The New Life is a fine-cut gem, its sentences buffed to a gleam … [Crewe’s book] brims with élan and feeling, an ode to eros and a lost world, and a warning about the dangers ahead’ * Hamilton Cain, Washington Post *

Tom Crewe was born in Middlesbrough in 1989. He has a PhD in nineteenth century British history from the University of Cambridge. Since 2015, he has been an editor at the London Review of Books, to which he contributes essays on politics, art, history and fiction. The New Life is his first novel. Crewe says- ‘This is the book I knew I wanted to write long before I actually wrote it. I hope it reveals to readers an unfamiliar Victorian England that will surprise and provoke, inhabited by a generation in the process of discovering the nature and limits of personal freedom, struggling to create a better world as the twentieth century comes into view.’

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