Shadow Child

'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.

“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.”

Strongly recommended - Daily Mail

The arresting new novel by one of our best-loved writers - The Times

- Saga

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

A bouncy and enlightening read - Good Housekeeping

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

Libby Purves is a writer and also a broadcaster who has presented the talk programme Midweek on Radio 4 since 1984 and formerly presented Today. She is a main columnist on the Times and in 1999 was named the Granada What the Papers Say Columnist of the Year, and awarded an O.B.E for services to journalism. She lives in Suffolk with her husband, the broadcaster and writer Paul Heiney.

'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.

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