The Dark Circle
On sale
6th April 2017
Price: £9.99
Jewish Quarterly Wingate Prize, 2018
Shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction
‘Extraordinarily affecting’ Alex Preston, Observer
‘This is a novel whose engine is flesh and blood, not cold ideas . . . Grant brings the 1950s – that odd, downbeat, fertile decade between war and sexual liberation – into sharp, bright, heartbreaking focus’ – Christobel Kent Guardian
All over Britain life is beginning again now the war is over but for Lenny and Miriam, East End London teenage twins who have been living on the edge of the law, life is suspended – they’ve contacted tuberculosis. It’s away to the sanatorium – newly opened by the NHS – in deepest Kent for them where they will meet a very different world: among other patients, an aristocract, a young university grad, a mysterious German woman and an American merchant seaman with big ideas about love and rebellion. They are not the only ones whose lives will be changed forever.
‘Grant is so good at conjuring up atmosphere and writes with earthy vivacity’- Anthony Gardner Mail on Sunday
‘Read this fine, persuasive, moving novel and contemplate’ John Sutherland, The Times
‘Extraordinarily affecting’ Alex Preston, Observer
‘This is a novel whose engine is flesh and blood, not cold ideas . . . Grant brings the 1950s – that odd, downbeat, fertile decade between war and sexual liberation – into sharp, bright, heartbreaking focus’ – Christobel Kent Guardian
All over Britain life is beginning again now the war is over but for Lenny and Miriam, East End London teenage twins who have been living on the edge of the law, life is suspended – they’ve contacted tuberculosis. It’s away to the sanatorium – newly opened by the NHS – in deepest Kent for them where they will meet a very different world: among other patients, an aristocract, a young university grad, a mysterious German woman and an American merchant seaman with big ideas about love and rebellion. They are not the only ones whose lives will be changed forever.
‘Grant is so good at conjuring up atmosphere and writes with earthy vivacity’- Anthony Gardner Mail on Sunday
‘Read this fine, persuasive, moving novel and contemplate’ John Sutherland, The Times
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Reviews
A rich, engaging novel, further proof that Grant can conjure up a special mood in a specific period with great humour
The novel is funny but also poignant . . . I loved it
Grant is so good at conjuring up atmosphere and writes with earthy vivacity
Her cast of characters is nothing less than a portrayal of post-war, class-riven Britain from the indolent aristocracy, to Oxford-educated blue stockings, and from car salesmen to the bottom of the pile, German emigres and East End Jewish lowlifes . . .This is a novel, above all, about trauma caused by the "dark circle" of tuberculosis, and results in a "tight circle" of comradeship. The ambitious reach of the novel is wisely held in check by its focus on a time when Lenny and Miriam had to discover for themselves what it was to be human
Contemporary issues linger ominously in Grant's margins, silently enriching what's already an astonishingly good period piece
A Grant novel is always a treat . . . Grant captures the stigma that surrounded TB perfectly
Exhilaratingly good . . . This is a novel whose engine is flesh and blood, not cold ideas . . . Grant brings the 1950s - that odd, downbeat, fertile decade between war and sexual liberation - into sharp, bright, heartbreaking focus
A writer whose language crackles with vitality and whose descriptive powers are working at such a high level
An extraordinary depiction of the physical and emotional experience of illness. She marvellously communicates the poignancy of youth and sexuality in the presence of impending death. Grant's voice is unlike any other writer; so immediate and engaged even when writing historical fiction
Fascinating . . . a revealing insight: both funny and illuminating, it is a novel about what it means to treat people well, medically, emotionally and politically
An amazing subject, wonderfully depicted, with plausible people whom I grew to love . . . the most surprising plot developments. So original and full of life
The Dark Circle is, beneath its narrative surface, fiercely political. She poses a large, naggingly relevant, question. What would (will?) privatisation of the NHS mean? Read this fine, persuasive, moving novel and contemplate - if you can dare to - that awful possibility
Extraordinarily affecting
Linda Grant brings a forgotten slice of social and medical history to life by conjuring a rich cast of disparate - though equally desperate - characters observed with wry humour and affection to produce an absorbing and profoundly moving story