“When I was fifteen, I told my mother that I was in love with a boy called Simon Hurst and she said to me, ‘Nobody falls in love at your age, Marianne. What they get are “crushes” on people. You’ve just manufactured a little crush on Simon.’”

My thanks to Random House U.K. Vintage Chatto & Windus for an eARC via NetGalley of ‘Absolutely and Forever’ by Rose Tremain.

This was a well crafted tale of a young woman’s coming of age in 1960s London. 

When the novel opens Marianne Clifford is living with her parents in Berkshire. Home for the holidays from boarding school, she falls helplessly and absolutely in love with eighteen-year-old Simon Hurst. Everything suggests that he has a bright future but then his plans are blown off course and he relocates to Paris leaving Marianne heartbroken.

In 1963 at nineteen Marianne moves to London to attend secretarial college as the Sixties begin to swing. She continues as the heady 60s give way to more somber times reflecting: ‘‘Well, it was swinging, but now that’s pretty much over and we’ve got strikes and power cuts and miners on the dole and when I watch the news on TV I have to close my eyes.’

In this short novel Tremain explores the agony of first love and the challenges of finding one’s place in the adult world. I found Marianne a very relatable character who unflinchingly chronicles her life and its challenges. Horses figure in the story in various ways, including in a poignant story she hopes to write about an Argentinian horse, named Diego.

After various turns in her life Marianne returns to Berkshire realising: “This is what I really love: not London, nor my imaginary Paris, nor even the beaches of Sardinia, but oak trees and hedgerows and narrow English lanes threading along towards hills and tumps.”

Overall, I found ‘Absolutely and Forever’ an exquisitely written novel. Tremain clearly drew upon her own experiences growing up to produce a vivid recreation of its period setting. Given the setting and themes, I also feel that it is a novel that will appeal to reading groups.

This is my favourite genre and I'm glad I was given the opportunity to review this as an ARC.

Tremain perfectly captures young love, or rather young infatuation, and it did very much remind me of all the false hope of happily ever after as in An Education.

It was quite a short book but I don't mind that so much. Many emotions and a tragic event were captured well all the same.

Absolutely and Forever is a poignant short novel by Rose Tremain which captures a feeling of being a little lost in the world, of never quite growing into oneself. Coming from a cold and undemonstrative family, Marianne’s first experience of love stays with her, even when she is living a life that seems at times mystifying to her, at times deeply disappointing and at times acutely observed.

Rose Tremain, through her narrator Marianne, captures very well what it feels like to fall in love for the first time when a teenager. We follow Marianne’s story for the next 15 years or so, from 1959 onwards, as she struggles to deal with the aftermath, and the impact that it has on the rest of her life. Tremain brings the period to life vividly (or as I imagine the period to be), especially the ‘swinging 60s’ in London, as Marianne moves from the countryside to find work and a purpose in life. The object of her affection remains a shadowy character but has a huge impact on the choices she makes. As well as the character of Marianne, which is well drawn, Tremain brings other characters to life, including her parents and the man that she marries. While the novel is short, it is well worth reading, although it ends rather abruptly. I would have liked the story to continue. Thanks to the publisher and Net Galley for a review copy.

A quick and interesting read and one that I would recommend to my friends. I enjoyed this another. My thanks to netgalley and the publishers for giving me the opportunity to read this book in return for an honest review.

Based in 1960's this novel transported me to this time and felt like a really heartbreaking read of what it would be like to grow up in this time. However, the trauma was unexpected at points and I also feel like I just really didn't enjoy reading about Marianne. Her observations about life were interesting enough to stay away from childish but if I was her friend I really think I'd have had enough of her and asked her to get her life together a little.

I think her confusion, lack of direction and unrequited love story created quite a sad character but there are points that I found quite fun. These stopped the story from feeling too depressing but the fun parts never seemed to last long enough.

Overall, the beautiful writing and the side characters made this story intriguing but after I just felt a bit sad for Marianne as the story covered what felt like a prequel to her life.

My third Rose Tremain book – and each one has been so different! I liked this story about Marianne, a perfectly ordinary middle-class girl being hopelessly in love in the 50s and 60s. I thought the narrative voice was very clear and distinctive, the atmosphere and detail of the period very well-done, and it was such a neat little narrative, constructed almost like a short story. Not a massive favourite, but I enjoyed reading it!

The quality of the writing is superb in this novella set in the early 1960s, telling of first love and the pain it can cause when things don’t work out as hoped.The story is told through the eyes of Marianne Clifford,the only child of parents who make her feel she’s never quite good enough,although she’s quirky,funny ,kind and brave.At 15,she falls in love with Simon,the son of a neighbour and plans the life she expects them to have together. However, things change when Simon fails to get in to Oxford and instead goes to study in Paris,and Marianne has to make a different life for herself.
She marries Hugo,but always hopes that Simon will come back ,and this affects her for many years to come.
It’s so poignant and at the same time very funny in parts,and also very perceptive about human nature and the relationship between parents and children.I loved it.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for an ARC in return for a review which reflects my own opinion.

Is there any historical period that Rose Tremain can't accurately convey? After the moving and charming 'Lily' a couple of years ago, she has now turned to a coming-of-age novel set in 1960s London, where Marianne, supported by her friend Petronella, learn how to find their way around Chelsea. The beautifully crafted writing brings the characters to life in a fresh and engaging way, and the settings of London and Paris are described in pin-sharp period detail - the scenes in a boarding school are grimly true. My only reservation is that it wasn't longer, but you can't have everything,

Tremain follows her heroine, Marianne Clifford, from the 1950s up to perhaps 1970. At age 15, she falls hopelessly in love with an 18-year-old aspiring writer, Simon Hurst, and loses her virginity in the back of his pale blue Morris Minor. She feels grown-up and sophisticated, and imagines their romance as a grand adventure that will whisk her away from her parents’ stultifying ordinariness –

"when I thought about my future as Mrs Simon Hurst (riding a camel in Egypt, floating along in a gondola in Venice, driving through the Grand Canyon in an open-topped Cadillac, watching elephants drink from a waterhole in Africa) and about Mummy’s future (in the red-brick house in Berkshire with the shivery birch tree and the two white columns, playing Scrabble with Daddy and shopping at Bartlett’s of Newbury), I could see that my life was going to be more interesting than hers and that she might already be envious"

– but his new post-school life in Paris doesn’t have room for her. As she moves to London and trains for secretarial work, Marianne is bolstered by friendships with plain-speaking Scot Petronella (“Pet”) and Hugo Forster-Pellisier, her surfing and ping-pong partner on their parents’ Cornwall getaways. Forasmuch as her life changes over the next 15 years or so – taking on a traditional wife and homemaker role; her parents quietly declining – her attachment to her first love never falters.

This has the chic and convincing 1960s setting of Tessa Hadley’s work. Marianne’s narration is a delight, droll but not as blasé as she tries to appear. Tremain could have easily fallen into the trap of making her purely naïve (in the moment) or nostalgic (looking back), but instead she’s rendered her voice knowing yet compassionate, and made her a real wit (“I thought, Everything in Paris looks as if it’s practising the waltz, whereas quite a lot of things in London … appear as if they’ve just come out of hospital after a leg operation”). Pet is very funny, too. And it’s always fun for me to have nearby locations: Newbury, Reading, Marlborough. In imagining a different life for herself, Marianne resists repeating her mother’s mistakes and coincides with the rising feminist movement. There are two characters named Marianne, and two named Simon; the revelations about these doubles are breathtaking.

This really put me through an emotional wringer. It’s no cheap tear-jerker but a tender depiction of love in all its forms. I think, with Academy Street by Mary Costello, it may be my near-perfect novella.

I really enjoyed this short novel. The characters were so rounded and flawed it made for an entertaining - if quietly tragic - read. I felt fully immersed in the 1950s/60s setting. Would highly recommend.

I loved this short story; however it is much more than that. It’s a wonderful character study of Marianne from her teenage years into adulthood, against a backdrop of England in the 50’s and 60’s.
I was drawn in from the very beginning, the writing style is easy and natural and you feel you know the characters, from Marianne’s naive teenager to her terse and unloving (in her eyes) parents.
For such a short book it packs in so much feeling, character, period and longing and I’m already missing Marianne and her life. It’s a book I will turn to again.

With thanks to NetGalley and Random House for the advance copy to review.

This reads like a classic, but with humour and zest and feeling - if you like Francoise Sagan, you’ll enjoy this. It perfectly encapsulates your late teens and yet seems to cover quite a time span in such a short space. It’s impressive. The writing is realistic and Marianne’s character is just great, she’s honest but funny and very much of her time. It’s fast paced as it covers a fair few years and lots happens, but nothing is brushed over too quickly. It displays lovely friendships and the experience of heartbreak, but comes to quite a heartwarming conclusion - without giving any spoilers, I totally didn’t expect Simon and Marianne’s ending to be as it was, but it made perfect sense.

A short story. Thought this book was more of a novello as I read it in a couple of hours it was enjoyable in parts and quite an unusual story but think it would appeal to much younger readers it wasn't really for me I'm afraid I was slightly disappointed especially at the ending.

A remarkably thin and inconsequential (and short) coming-of-age novel about a young woman who doesn't actually ever come-of-age. In the late 1950s teenager Marianne falls in love with Simon. Her whole world is based on the dream of spending her life with him. Fate has other plans, as does Simon, and essentially Marianne spends the rest of her life self-indulgently obsessing about her loss. Upper-middle-class Chelsea at its most stereotypical, self-indulgent and narcissistic. The novel evokes the era quite well, and occasionally Tremain’s writing successfully skewers the lifestyle, but basically this is a romantic lightweight novel with nothing much to say and which didn’t interest me in the slightest. I know Tremain can do better than this – think of Restoration, The Road Home, The Gustav Sonata – but if you enjoy stories of broken hearts and first passions, then it’s perfectly acceptable. And a couple of fairly predictable plot twists at the end do indeed liven things up. But overall for me a disappointment.

A sharp and witty novella, Marianne is completely oblivious to all that is going on around her, however Rose Tremain balances her character perfectly so that it is not frustrating and off-putting to read but rather entertaining reading the exploits of this extremely spoiled and privileged young lady.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the chance to read this ARC.

'Absolutely and Forever' is a compact and exquisitely crafted novel about young love and the long shadow it casts over a life. Beginning in the late 1950s, the narrator, Marianne Clifford, falls in love aged fifteen with eighteen-year-old Simon Hurst to whom she soon loses her virginity. Her love is obsessive and all-consuming, but after only a few encounters Simon completely disappears from her life and Marianne must find a different future.

It is frequently claimed - both by Marianne and others around her, particularly her cold, undemonstrative parents - that Marianne does not possess the sharpest intellect; at times she is certainly naive in her single-minded fixation with Simon, but one never feels that Tremain is sneering at her or that we are being invited to judge her. Instead, what emerges is a simply told and deftly observed story of a largely unfulfilled life, including an aborted career and an amicable but (on Marianne's side) loveless marriage. This is set against the backdrop of a rapidly changing social mores: while Marianne's schoolfriend Pet studies sociology at the newly-formed University of Essex and takes part in CND marches, Marianne's parents stay put in their Berkshire home, worrying about whether Colonel Clifford's army pension will keep up with the increasing cost of living. Part of the tragedy of this story is the realisation that things might have unfolded very differently if Marianne and Simon had been born a decade or two later.

The novel is reminiscent of other stories of young love in the decades following WW2 such as Ian McEwan's 'On Chesil Beach', Julian Barnes's 'The Only Story' and 'The Sense of an Ending', and Lynn Barber's memoir 'An Education'. Although there is great sadness in this novel, this worn very lightly and there also some enjoyable comic moments - particularly when Marianne and a boy she meets on holiday end up playing ping-pong in old fur coats. The novel's ending also offers some sense of closure and redemption as well as delivering a couple of surprising revelations in the final pages which recast everything we have read in a new light - again, rather like 'The Sense of an Ending'.

This is another excellent novel by Rose Tremain, slender but by no means slight. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me an ARC to review.

What is not to love in a new novel by Rose Tremain? A go to novelist for me for many years now. Marianne, at 15, meets Simon at a summer party, and falls in love It is this relationship that will echo throughout her life and affect the decisions she makes. This short novel set in the 50s and 60s catches the feeling of the period perfectly, and I believe that the author may have taken some inspiration from her own experiences. A coming of age novel that is deftly handled and leaves the reader wanting more. Many thanks to NetGalley. and the publisher for the ARC of this novel in return for an honest review

Poignant and beautifully written story of coming-of-age and thwarted love.

Marianne is intelligent and able but, from the age of 15, views her whole life through the prism of her love for Simon, continuing to believe that one day they will be together even after he moves to Paris and marries someone else.

She loses enthusiasm for school, disappointing her parents with her poor results, and despite being good at her job, her preoccupation with Simon looms over her working days. When she eventually drifts into a caring marriage this is also beset by tragedy.

An understated, poignant and thought-provoking read.

The torment of teenage love is the starting point of this sparkling gem of a novel. It’s the 1950s and posh schoolgirl Marianne is obsessed with floppy-haired Simon, who deflowers her in the back of his baby-blue Morris Minor one febrile evening. Simon is meant to go to Oxford but when he fails his entrance exams he decides to decamp to Paris, with lofty ambitions of becoming a writer.
Marianne’s world becomes reduced to waiting for letters from the city of love but one day the news is devastating. Simon is getting married. Our distraught heroine moons around on holiday with the lanky redhead Hugo, and the pair become firm friends. Time passes and Marianne and Hugo become companionable husband and wife. All the while Marianne entertains wild fantasies of Simon, unable ever to let him go.
A devastating personal loss casts a pall over her marriage and when Marianne’s mom gets sick Simon is brought back into her orbit.
This brilliant portrait of upper-class English life is so funny, so tender and so entertaining. The reader finds herself cheering for the very flawed but loveable heroine. A wonderful read.