First Love
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First Love
A singular, devastating journey into the ungovernable reaches of the heart Observer
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2017
First Love is centred around Neve, a writer in her mid-30s married to an older man, Edwyn. For now, they are in a place of relative peace, but their past battles have left scars. As Neve recalls the decisions that led her to this marriage, she tells of other loves and other debts, from her bullying father and her self-involved mother to a musician who played her and a series of lonely flights from place to place.
Drawing the reader into the battleground of her relationship, Neve spins a story of helplessness and hostility, an ongoing conflict in which both husband and wife have played a part. But is this, nonetheless, also a story of love?
Series: Granta Shorts
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INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781803513560
Publisher: Granta Books
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 09 April 2026
Country: United Kingdom
Imprint: Granta Books
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Width: 129.0mm
Height: 198.0mm
Weight: 250g
Pages: 176
About the Author
Gwendoline Riley was born in London in 1979 and has been hailed as one of the most significant young British writers. She is is the author of six novels, including My Phantoms, which was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize, and First Love, which was shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Literature, the Dylan Thomas Prize, the Gordon Burn Prize, and won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. She has also been awarded a Betty Trask Award and a Somerset Maugham Award, and has been shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. In 2018, the Times Literary Supplement named her as one of the twenty best British and Irish novelists working today.
Also by Gwendoline Riley
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