Crazy
On sale
8th April 2021
Price: £16.99
‘Perhaps my problem all along is that I’ve never understood or recognized the difference between story and life…’
Crazy is an account of the origins and progress of an early, all-consuming relationship. Jane, the teller of the tale, shuttles between her present predicament, assailed by physical symptoms she can’t explain, and the story in hand, an ill-fated tale of obsession compelling in its rawness and emotional candour. With humour and a poetic sturdiness that is by now characteristic of her writing, Jane returns to scenes of childhood whose after-effects can be seen to permeate the emotional landscape of what unfolds – marriage, childbirth and the vagaries of working life.
Questions of love, ambition and identity are examined in a novel that is, above all, about story-making itself, about who gets to tell the tale and how, and about the ways in which those stories we absorb and accrue become the ones that make us, and (if anything can) might redeem us, too.
Crazy is an account of the origins and progress of an early, all-consuming relationship. Jane, the teller of the tale, shuttles between her present predicament, assailed by physical symptoms she can’t explain, and the story in hand, an ill-fated tale of obsession compelling in its rawness and emotional candour. With humour and a poetic sturdiness that is by now characteristic of her writing, Jane returns to scenes of childhood whose after-effects can be seen to permeate the emotional landscape of what unfolds – marriage, childbirth and the vagaries of working life.
Questions of love, ambition and identity are examined in a novel that is, above all, about story-making itself, about who gets to tell the tale and how, and about the ways in which those stories we absorb and accrue become the ones that make us, and (if anything can) might redeem us, too.
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Reviews
Set amid the debris of a marriage which still haunts her, Feaver's beautifully written and startlingly frank book is so humane in its hard-won wisdom that every reader will recognise themselves in it
Stunning . . . Tackling sex, writing and office politics, Jane shrewdly eyes her youthful guilelessness in a satisfyingly rich and complex narrative that rings so messily true to life, it almost feels transgressive
Terribly funny, appallingly grim, acutely observed. It's wonderful
Crazy is a taut, intelligent and engaging addition to the genre.
Wonderful. Heart-bumpingly evocative of place and time, and a resonant, compelling act of creative remembering, of early life regrets and mistakes that might not have been either
Dealing candidly with work, sex and motherhood, this searing auto-fictional novel about a creative writing teacher raking over the fall-out from her failed marriage was an absolute belter.
I was blown away by Crazy. A book without the slightest self-importance, fed by a subterranean stream one part anger to two parts love, and all done with the kind of skill and care that marks Jane Feaver out as a writer in the top rank. Brilliant
[One of the] most startling novels I've read this year and would recommend for total holiday immersion.
I have yet to read a better account of the way in which the tales we tell about ourselves are themselves a form of addiction.
Crackles with energy, integrity and a deep poetic sensibility. A raw and disturbing story of obsessive attraction, it obsesses the reader also, with the force of a haunting
This book is brilliant - brave, truthful and intelligent