Shadow Child - Tapa dura

'Strongly recommended' -- Daily Mail 'Full of wisdom ... her natural lyricism bears lightly the heavy anguish beating from the story's heart' -- The Times 'Purves' sensitive, lyrical descriptions of brave grief had me in floods more than once' -- Daily Mail Praise for LOVE SONGS AND LIES:'Touching insight ... Purves seems to feel keenly the paradox that, despite love being humanity's redeeming featue, it inspires acts that cause untold and unforeseen pain' -- Times 'The arresting new novel by one of our best-loved writers' -- The Times 'Through this lively, often funny, topical story of discovery and reconciliation, ultimately of love, Libby Purves touchingly and truthfully explores and extends the conventional idea of family.' -- Saga 'Libby Purves writes with great humanity in this engrossing novel that reveals there is more than one kind of family.' -- Closer magazine 'Purves is good on the detail of the drugs and rock 'n' roll era when students were not regarded as an industry and were shunned by banks rather than given ever increasing loans. She captures the pain of youthful romantic yearnings' -- Daily Mail 'Purves is a fine writer and the slow pace at the start of the novel proves well pitched to heighten the rising tension of the story' -- She

'Family love is one of the most powerful elemental forces on earth, and at that moment, our last moment as a unit of three, we rode a great curling triumphant wave of it, all together. Death may have thought that he won, but I think otherwise.' There is no right way to deal with the loss of a beloved son. Marion and Tom are doing their dignified best, but their own relationship is taking a battering. So when a fierce, strange woman turns up and demands to see the dead boy, Marion is almost glad of the distraction. Against Tom's wishes, she determines to find out more about her son's life away from home. The quest takes her out of her comfortable, conventional world to a shabby office in East London, and a series of shocks. Tom, furious, finds his own solution, and amid scandal, sorrow and exaltation the quiet Middle-Englanders discover that there is more than one kind of family.