{"title":"Maggie O'Farrell","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"the-hand-that-first-held-mine-a-novel","title":"The Hand That First Held Mine: A Novel","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eFrom the best-selling author of \u003cem\u003eHamnet\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eThe Marriage Portrait\u003c\/em\u003e comes a spellbinding novel of two women connected across fifty years by art, love, betrayals, secrets, and motherhood.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\"An exquisitely sensual tale of love, motherhood, and other forms of madness, \u003cem\u003eThe Hand That First Held Mine\u003c\/em\u003e will unsettle, move, and haunt you.\" —Emma Donoghue, author of \u003cem\u003eRoom\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLexie Sinclair is plotting an extraordinary life for herself.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHedged in by her parents' genteel country life, she plans her escape to London. There, she takes up with Innes Kent, a magazine editor who introduces her to the thrilling, underground world of bohemian, post-war Soho. She learns to be a reporter, to know art and artists, to embrace her life fully and with a deep love at the center of it. And when she finds herself pregnant, she doesn't hesitate to have the baby on her own.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLater, in present-day London, a young painter named Elina dizzily navigates the first weeks of motherhood. She doesn't recognize herself: she finds herself walking outside with no shoes; she goes to the restaurant for lunch at nine in the morning; she can't recall the small matter of giving birth. But for her boyfriend, Ted, fatherhood is calling up lost memories, with images he cannot place.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAs Ted's memories become more disconcerting and more frequent, it seems that something might connect these two stories—these two women—something that becomes all the more heartbreaking and beautiful as they all hurtle toward its revelation.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003ePraised by \u003cem\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/em\u003e as a “breathtaking, heart-breaking creation,” \u003cem\u003eThe Hand That First Held Mine\u003c\/em\u003e is a gorgeous and tenderly wrought story about the ways in which love and beauty bind us together. 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Reminiscent of classic writers like Rebecca West and Daphne du Maurier.”—\u003cb\u003eAli Smith, author of \u003ci\u003eAutumn\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the middle of tending to the everyday business at her vintage-clothing shop in Edinburgh and sidestepping her married boyfriend’s attempts at commitment, Iris Lockhart receives a stunning phone call: Her great-aunt Esme, whom she never knew existed, is being released from Cauldstone Hospital—where she has been locked away for more than sixty-one years. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIris’s grandmother Kitty always claimed to be an only child. But Esme’s papers prove she is Kitty’s sister, and Iris can see the shadow of her dead father in Esme’s face. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eEsme has been labeled harmless—sane enough to coexist with the rest of the world. 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