Books | Better to Have Loved and Lost
Author Biography
Adam Kirkman has been running Quick Brown Fox Publications for the last three and a half years and has two previous titles published, 2006's Before The Eyes Of The Gods and 2008's How Not To Manage (with Daniel Mayhew.) He is hard at work on a million other projects - including more novels, humour books and business plans - but he still spends far too much time wondering what the smoke monster is in Lost.
Publication Date
May, 2009
Blurb
"There was something peculiar about the way the ocean swirled about this curious little town right on the very tip of Italy's boot: all the oceans in the world seemed to arrive right on their very doorstep. Bottles, floating forever, eventually travel the globe - and tiny eddy currents caused, perhaps, by a butterfly flapping its wings in Tokyo, or a storm in Buenos Aires, swirled the bottles inexorably towards their resting place. The sea takes its time, but all these bottled dreams eventually find their way to Melito di Porto Salvo."
Born in the little village of Melito di Porto Salvo, the steps of Roberto Montague's life seem to be uncannily measured by the bottles that wash up on the shore. These bottles contain messages from around the world, thrown into the sea by people seeking answers from fate, or God. These answers do not come. Instead, it is Roberto, himself swept around the globe and through history, that brings the answers to those questions sealed in glass.
A story of love, fate and bottles, Kirkman's highly-anticipated second novel explores the contrast of darkness and hope in human souls, and sets out to answer whether it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.
First Chapter
Click here to access a PDF of the first chapter.
Review
Better To Have Loved And Lost is really charming and touching and sad; and beautifully told. It was a real pleasure to read... I've given it the big thumbs up.
- Francoise Higson, Rosalind Ramsay Literary Scouts
Previous Praise
"Adam Kirkman's Before The Eyes Of The Gods is one of the most striking, assured debut novels I have read for a while. The style and the plot are somewhat reminiscent of Neil Gamain's American Gods, which certainly isn't a bad thing. The book puts a clutch of Greek gods in the present day and asks what revenge they might take on the descendants of those who have wronged them. Plane crashes, forbidden love, pain and grief result as we follow the human characters (quite literally) to hell and back. The strange mix of epic myth and modern day could very easily slip into parody, but Kirkman manages to make it work. As a result, there are some fantastically satisfying stylistic moments - and the gods' preferred method of exercising their power, through music, provides a poignant metaphor for the sometimes unfathomable impulses that guide us all. This is a unique novel; sprightly, readable and challenging. It's real brain food."
- The Bookseller
Purchase book
Click here to purchase Better to Have Loved and Lost from Amazon.
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