Gavin McCrea – författare

From the author of Mrs Engels and The Sisters Mao, an intimate family memoir about filial love and its limits, separation, and loss.Gavin is spending the quarantine with his eighty-year-old mother, whose mind is slowly slipping away. He has returned home to care for her and to write a novel. But all he can write about is her. In this frank and revealing memoir, he unspools an intimate story of his upbringing and early adulthood: feeling out of place as a child, homophobic bullying at school, his brother’s mental illness and drug addiction, his father’s sudden death, his own devastating diagnosis, his struggles and triumphs as a writer, and above all, his relationship with his mother. Her brightness shines a light over his childhood, but her betrayal of his teenage self leads to years of resentment and disconnection. Now, he must find a way to reconcile with her, before it is too late.

'Inventive, intimate, often devastating . . . packs a heavy emotional punch, producing a deeply affecting account of power and connection and its ability to entrap us, even in love' Irish Times'Smart, formally playful, and psychologically astute, Rousseau's Lost Children is a novel of ideas with moral insight and real emotional power' Ferdia Lennon, author of Glorious ExploitsParis, 1777. The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau receives a mysterious letter from a foreign visitor, Gavin Mulvany, asking whether the great man will take walks with him. Against his better judgement, Rousseau agrees. Might this stranger, who claims to be from the twenty-first century, be the true friend that Rousseau has been searching for his whole life?Paris, 2022. Gavin, a middle-aged academic, leaves his husband behind in Ireland to finish a long-delayed biography of Rousseau. While in Paris, he avoids work on his book by instead taking walks with Rousseau himself. As they wander the streets, Gavin and Rousseau open up about certain past actions that have come to define them. Was Rousseau justified in abandoning his children? Should Gavin be forgiven for the terrible crime he committed to protect a man he once loved? Can talking and walking together lead both Gavin and Rousseau to finally be honest with themselves and their loved ones, and to a better understanding of what love, family, and society really mean?Rousseau's Lost Children is a thrilling epistolary novel cast across centuries, a bold and illuminating investigation into the boundaries of personal liberty and matters of morality, desire and loyalty.

'Inventive, intimate, often devastating . . . packs a heavy emotional punch, producing a deeply affecting account of power and connection and its ability to entrap us, even in love' Irish Times'Smart, formally playful, and psychologically astute, Rousseau's Lost Children is a novel of ideas with moral insight and real emotional power' Ferdia Lennon, author of Glorious ExploitsParis, 1777. The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau receives a mysterious letter from a foreign visitor, Gavin Mulvany, asking whether the great man will take walks with him. Against his better judgement, Rousseau agrees. Might this stranger, who claims to be from the twenty-first century, be the true friend that Rousseau has been searching for his whole life?Paris, 2022. Gavin, a middle-aged academic, leaves his husband behind in Ireland to finish a long-delayed biography of Rousseau. While in Paris, he avoids work on his book by instead taking walks with Rousseau himself. As they wander the streets, Gavin and Rousseau open up about certain past actions that have come to define them. Was Rousseau justified in abandoning his children? Should Gavin be forgiven for the terrible crime he committed to protect a man he once loved? Can talking and walking together lead both Gavin and Rousseau to finally be honest with themselves and their loved ones, and to a better understanding of what love, family, and society really mean?Rousseau's Lost Children is a thrilling epistolary novel cast across centuries, a bold and illuminating investigation into the boundaries of personal liberty and matters of morality, desire and loyalty.

'Inventive, intimate, often devastating . . . packs a heavy emotional punch, producing a deeply affecting account of power and connection and its ability to entrap us, even in love' Irish Times'Smart, formally playful, and psychologically astute, Rousseau's Lost Children is a novel of ideas with moral insight and real emotional power' Ferdia Lennon, author of Glorious ExploitsParis, 1777. The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau receives a mysterious letter from a foreign visitor, Gavin Mulvany, asking whether the great man will take walks with him. Against his better judgement, Rousseau agrees. Might this stranger, who claims to be from the twenty-first century, be the true friend that Rousseau has been searching for his whole life?Paris, 2022. Gavin, a middle-aged academic, leaves his husband behind in Ireland to finish a long-delayed biography of Rousseau. While in Paris, he avoids work on his book by instead taking walks with Rousseau himself. As they wander the streets, Gavin and Rousseau open up about certain past actions that have come to define them. Was Rousseau justified in abandoning his children? Should Gavin be forgiven for the terrible crime he committed to protect a man he once loved? Can talking and walking together lead both Gavin and Rousseau to finally be honest with themselves and their loved ones, and to a better understanding of what love, family, and society really mean?Rousseau's Lost Children is a thrilling epistolary novel cast across centuries, a bold and illuminating investigation into the boundaries of personal liberty and matters of morality, desire and loyalty.

A Sunday Independent Book of the YearAgainst the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution and Europe’s sexual revolution, the fates of two families in London and Beijing become unexpectedly intertwined, in this dazzling new novel from the author of Mrs Engels.Revolution is a Family Affair.In London, sisters Iris and Eva, members of a radical performance collective, plan an attack on the West End theatre where their mother is playing the title role in Miss Julie. Meanwhile in Beijing, Jiang Qing, Chairman Mao’s wife, rehearses a gala performance of her model ballet, The Red Detachment of Women, which she will use to attack her enemies in the Party.As the preparations for these two astonishing performances unfold, Iris, Eva, and Jiang Qing are transformed into unforgettable protagonists in a single epic drama. The three ‘sisters’, although fighting very different personal battles, find themselves bound together by the passions of love, by the obsessions of power, and by the forces of history.Exquisitely observed, relevant, and wise, The Sisters Mao shows us that the political is always personal.

A Sunday Independent Book of the YearAgainst the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution and Europe’s sexual revolution, the fates of two families in London and Beijing become unexpectedly intertwined, in this dazzling new novel from the author of Mrs Engels.In London, sisters Iris and Eva plan an attack on the West End theatre where their mother is playing the title role in Miss Julie; in Beijing, Jiang Qing, Chairman Mao’s wife, rehearses a gala performance of her model ballet, which she will use to attack her enemies in the Party.As the preparations for these two performances unfold, these three ‘sisters’ find themselves bound together by the passions of love, by the obsessions of power, and by the forces of history.Exquisitely observed, relevant, and wise, The Sisters Mao shows us that the political is always personal.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2016 DESMOND ELLIOTT PRIZESHORTLISTED FOR THE 2016 WALKER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTIONLONGLISTED FOR THE 2015 GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARDLove is a bygone idea, centuries-worn. There are things we can go without, and love is among them; bread and a warm hearth are not.In September 1870 a train leaves Manchester bound for London. On board is Lizzie Burns, a poor worker from the Irish slums, who is embarking on the journey that will change her forever. Sitting in the first-class carriage beside her lover, the wealthy mill-owner Frederick Engels, the vision of a life of peace and comfort takes shape before her eyes: finally, at nearly fifty, she is to be the lady of a house and the wife to a man. Perhaps now she can put the difficulties of the past behind her, and be happy?In Gavin McCrea's stunning debut novel, we follow Lizzie as the promise of an easy existence in the capital slips from her view, and as she gains, in its place, a profound understanding of herself and of the world. While Frederick and his friend Karl Marx try to spur revolution among the working classes, Lizzie is compelled to undertake a revolution of another kind: of the heart and the soul. Haunted by her first love, a revolutionary Irishman; burdened by a sense of duty to right past mistakes; and torn between a desire for independence and the pragmatic need to be taken care of, Lizzie learns, as she says, that 'the world doesn't happen how you think it will. The secret is to soften to it, and to take its blows.'Wry, astute and often hilarious, Lizzie is as compelling and charismatic a figure as ever walked the streets of Victorian England, or its novels. In giving her renewed life, Gavin McCrea earns his place in the pantheon of great debut novelists.PRAISE FOR GAVIN MCCREA [M]asterly and original, examining through the eyes of the brave, noisy and clever yet illiterate Lizzie the work and friendship of Marx and Engels and the lives of women. The Age Extraordinarily assured Lizzie is an ever-intriguing, rounded character. The Herald Sun

Longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, and shortlisted for the Desmond Elliott Prize and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical FictionLove is a bygone idea, centuries-worn. There are things we can go without, and love is among them; bread and a warm hearth are not.In September 1870 a train leaves Manchester bound for London. On board is Lizzie Burns, a poor worker from the Irish slums, embarking on the journey that will change her forever.Sitting in the first-class carriage beside her lover, the wealthy mill-owner Frederick Engels, the vision of a life of peace and comfort takes shape before her eyes. But as Lizzie soon learns 'the world doesn't happen how you think it will. The secret is to soften to it, and to take its blows.'