The New Life

The New Life is filled with nuance and tenderness, steeped in the atmosphere of late nineteenth century London, a world on the brink of social and sexual change. Tom Crewe's brilliant novel dramatizes the relationship between the visionary and the brave, charting the lives of men and women who inspired not only political progress but an entire new way of living and loving.

Colm Tóibín

[Tom Crewe is] a very fine new writer

Kate Atkinson

Electrifying. Tom Crewe's forensic love of the physical puts the body back into history and makes the past a living, changing place

Anne Enright

'Atmospheric . . . Extraordinary . . . Crewe's taut prose is shot through with descriptive vividness'

James Cahill, TLS

'[An] intricate and finely crafted debut novel . . . The New Life brims with intelligence and insight, impressed with all the texture (and fog) of fin de siècle London'

New York Times

'Lyrical, piercing . . . The New Life is a fine-cut gem, its sentences buffed to a gleam . . . [Crewe's book] brims with élan and feeling, an ode to eros and a lost world, and a warning about the dangers ahead'

Hamilton Cain, Washington Post

'Nothing less than remarkable . . . A beautiful, brave book that reminds us of the terrible human cost of bigotry; this is a novel against forgetting'

Michael Schaub, Boston Globe

'Rich and engrossing . . . blending the graceful ambiguity of literary fiction with the deftness of a page-turner . . . A smart, sensual debut'

Kirkus (starred review)

It is a pleasure to discover a young novelist with such a wise sensibility - and also, one who can construct such convincing characters.

Sunday Times

Emotionally vivid and erotically charged, The New Life brilliantly reveals a 'seething and boiling' world of 'loneliness and anger and lust,' as Crewe's complicated, compelling protagonists battle the restrictive mores of the day

Daily Mail

This is a corker... one of the literary debuts of the year

The Times, *Books to Look Out For 2023*

Powerful themes and lovingly polished prose . . . a fictional debut of rare quality and promise

Daily Telegraph

Exhilarating . . . An adroit novel of ethics

New Statesman

Unflinchingly bold . . . Crewe's language is striking in its originality, his protagonists are colourful and passionate, and their principles are brilliantly drawn

i paper

Intense and precise . . . It is refreshing to find any contemporary novel, let alone a debut, which is first and foremost one of ideas

Financial Times

'Crewe distinguishes himself both as novelist and as historian . . . He has, more unusually, found a prose that can accommodate everything from the lofty to the romantic and the shamelessly sexy'

New Yorker

'Crewe deserves applause for his vivid scene-setting . . . There's much to admire in this meticulously researched, boldly envisioned debut'

Prospect

[An] excellent new novel

Independent

Sexy, cerebral and moving

Mail on Sunday

A few established novelists continue to write first-class literary fiction on LGBTQ themes... The debut novel by Tom Crewe...reveals a new talent in the field. It is underpinned by extensive research... [with] a great story at its heart.

Literary Review

The New Life drives with a satisfying pace and a pleasing sense of both conclusion and open endings... how impressive it is that Crewe has synthesised a coherent and compelling fiction from his elements

Critic

Superb . . . Remarkably sensuous and intimate

Spectator

An excellent debut . . . It's extraordinary to think that this impeccably crafted, lyrically phrased and muscular book is Crewe's first . . . a brilliant evocation of the radical politics of turn-of-the-century Britain

Michael Donkor, Guardian

Crewe demonstrates rare promise in this beautifully crafted story about two real-life pioneers who tried to make a case for homosexuality in Victorian Britain... Crewe brings this era pungently to life

Sunday Times

'A beautifully written debut set in Victorian London... some of the best writing on desire I've read'

Douglas Stuart

[An] incredibly assured debut... A fresh take on the historical novel, with desire at its heart, written with a charged certainty that the personal is political

Guardian, *Summer Reads of 2023*

A rich, panoramic novel stuffed with vivid characters, heartaches and hazards... [a] brilliant debut

Sunday Times, *Summer Reads of 2023*

'Tom Crewe inhabits the minds, lives and bodies of his visionary late-nineteenth century characters with almost eerie precision and intensity. The result is subtle, sexy and beautifully crafted - a wonderful book'

Sarah Waters

'Clever and kind, The New Life is a book of wonderful generosity and compassion'

Alice Winn, author of In Memoriam

Crewe's beautiful novel is filled with nuance and forensic insight into love. Deftly recreating the atmosphere of 1890s London, The New Life is a tour de force of intelligent and empathetic fiction

UK Press Syndication

A debut of impressive skill... Crewe is a trained historian and it shows: the period detail is exquisite

Daily Telegraph, *Summer Reads of 2023*

The novel is full of exquisitely drawn detail, right from the opening scene, making the moral and social dilemmas at the centre of the story dynamic and compelling

GQ

Completely engrossed by this fascinating story of gay life in the London of the 1890’s. Beautifully written with fantastically complicated characters

Graham Norton

'Extraordinary in its depiction of reform and liberalism in Britain in the late-1800s'

Jonathan Bailey, star of Bridgerton

I loved this book

Zadie Smith

[A] pitch-perfect debut novel

Spectator, *Books of the Year*

[An] enthralling, sexy debut novel… beautifully crafted

Sunday Times

A once-in-a-generation talent

Johanna Thomas-Corr, chair of judges - Sunday Times Charlotte Aitken Young Writer of the Year Award

Tom Crewe’s debut is a beautifully crafted period piece that isn’t at all dusty or deadened by artificiality, but fresh and fully alive

Guardian

There are debut novels that glimmer with promise and then there are debut novels that arrive fully formed. Tom Crewe’s The New Life manages to be both… a novel that’s so richly textured and mature, it feels like an established classic

Sunday Times

It’s wonderful when a book lives up to all the praise and prizes. A fascinating story, so confidently told, with thoroughly real characters and agonising moral compromises. Brilliant!

Clare Chambers