- Published: 6 August 2020
- ISBN: 9780241975350
- Imprint: Penguin General UK
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 256
- RRP: $32.99
A Radical Romance
A Memoir of Love, Grief and Consolation
- Published: 6 August 2020
- ISBN: 9780241975350
- Imprint: Penguin General UK
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 256
- RRP: $32.99
Part detective story, part Dickensian saga, part labour history. A thrilling and unnerving read
Observer, on Common People
Mesmeric and deeply moving
Daily Telegraph, on Common People
Remarkable, haunting, full of wisdom
The Times, on Common People
The most powerful family history I have ever read
Penelope Lively, New York Times, on Common People
A memoir of cauterising honesty. This is a book that deserves to be widely read
Spectator
Beautifully crafted...It casts a light on the lightness of love and the profound depression of loss. A truly gifted writer
Hugh MacDonald, The Herald
Extremely interesting, moving, brilliantly written, as one would expect from Alison Light
Claire Tomalin
She writes with precision and tenderness about loss. A Radical Romance is an admirable tribute to a man, a period of rapid change in London, and an unusual marriage
Guardian
There are of course memoirs that do astonish and exceed our expectations of mere self-accounting: in recent years, Helen Macdonald's H Is for Hawk; Patti Smith's various autobiographical writings; Lorna Sage's Bad Blood; and Gillian Rose's Love's Work. Alison Light's A Radical Romance now joins this select bunch of books about the self that are not simply self-regarding but truly self-exploratory
Guardian
An inspiring account of the deep love between Alison Light and her late husband Raphael Samuel
TLS
Compulsively readable. Light is a shrewd narrator . . . she reflects with careful psychological and philosophical insight on the reality of loneliness and profound loss following ten years of marriage. Light is also a poet and it shows in certain suppositions or propositions, those observations she posits in high-wire mental leaps.
RTE