The Lovers of Amherst

William Nicholson Quercus €28.99

Massachusetts, 1881. Emily Dickinson’s married brother has an affair with a younger woman, scandalising society. Fast-forward to 2013 and it is the turn of another Dickinson, screenwriter Alice from England, to bed an older married man in Massachusetts. What, if anything, has changed? William Nicholson’s masterly novel, zig-zagging between two contrasting eras, weaves love, sex and poetry together so seamlessly that you can hardly see the joins. You turn the pages compulsively because you care what will happen to the principals, fearlessly following their hearts, deaf to the clamour of the alarm bells.