Love Forms - by Claire Adam (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

BOOKER PRIZE LONGLIST - "A vibrant, heartstrings-tugging novel" (People) about a mother's love, in all its forms, as a woman searches for the daughter she gave up for adoption, from the prize-winning author of Golden Child

"A beautiful story . . . explores what it means to be a woman and what it means to love."--Amanda Peters, author of The Berry Pickers

"Reads like a Claire Keegan story expanded by Elizabeth Strout."--The Times, "Best Books to Take on Holiday This Summer"

AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

For much of her life, Dawn has felt as if something is missing. Now, at the age of fifty-eight, with a divorce behind her and her two grown-up sons busy with their own lives, she should be trying to settle into a new future for herself. But she keeps returning to the past and to the secret she's kept all these years. At just sixteen, Dawn found herself pregnant, and--as was common in Trinidad back then--her parents sent her away to have the baby and give her up for adoption.

More than forty years later, Dawn yearns to reconnect with her lost daughter. But tracking down her child is not as easy as she had thought. It's an emotional journey that leads Dawn to retrace her steps--from Trinidad to Venezuela and then to London--and to question not only that fateful decision she'd made as a teenager but every turn in the road of her life since.

Love Forms is a powerfully moving story of a woman in search of herself--a novel that rings with heartfelt empathy through the passages of a mother's life, depicting the enduring bonds of love, family, and home.

Review Quotes

"[An] unforgettable heartache of a novel."--Vogue (UK)

"Patience is the virtue of this quiet, naturalistic novel, which slowly expands around absences. . . . Though [Claire] Adam is a different sort of stylist, she produces echoes of Jean Rhys, whose disaffected London heroines cast back nostalgically to their Caribbean childhoods. . . . With little ado, Love Forms culminates in a family reunion on the island, staging reckonings that touchingly explore the ache and joy of memory."--The Wall Street Journal

"Alive and convincing . . . The final pages, which unfold at the family's beach house on Tobago, are as gripping as any thriller, and the ending, when it comes, feels as right as it is devastating."--The Guardian

"A moving story of a mother's love and longing, Love Forms pulls you deep into the landscape of memories and emotions as a mother searches for the daughter she gave up for adoption. Claire Adam's prose is lit from within."--Charmaine Wilkerson, New York Times bestselling author of Black Cake and Good Dirt

"Gripping and heart-rending."--Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Delicately written and emotionally devastating. . . . It's a tender, tense reverie, elegantly capturing Dawn's secret sorrow."--Mail on Sunday

"With its rich creation of all the elements that make up a life, Love Forms achieves a sort of alchemy. . . . A book that started by tantalising the reader ultimately delivers satisfaction. Dawn, in her quest to plug the hole in her life, makes us ask what success would look like anyway. To find her daughter would be an ending: but life--this life, the only life we have--is all about continuing."--Financial Times

"Adam shines in her characterization of the Bishop family, their fascinating dynamics, brutal honesty, and most of all, their enduring love for one another."--Booklist

A deeply affecting story . . . Adam's defining skill is to produce heartbreaking family stories that don't resort to mawkishness."--The Sunday Times

"Ambitiously layered . . . Adam pulls us into the murky tale with a deceptively unshowy style. . . . Crushingly tender, the novel explores heavy subjects without fuss."--The Daily Mail

"An utterly arresting tale of love and grief, of the wounding and healing powers of family, of the many guises of a mother's love."--Sara Collins, author of The Confessions of Frannie Langton

"A compelling and tender story of what--and who--is hidden in almost every family."--Monique Roffey, author of Passiontide

"An arresting voice that made me think of silk: Its delicate beauty belies its intrinsic strength."--Claire Kilroy, author of Soldier, Sailor

"A compelling read, full of secrets and the complexities of family and a rich sense of place."--Romesh Gunesekera, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Reef

"A quietly devastating masterpiece."--Marian Keyes, internationally bestselling author of My Favorite Mistake

"Love Forms draws the reader in with quiet authority to quite devastating effect."--Denise deCaires Narain, senior lecturer and reader in postcolonial literatures, University of Sussex

About the Author

Claire Adam's debut novel, Golden Child, was published by Sarah Jessica Parker's SJP for Hogarth. It was listed as one of the BBC's "100 Novels That Shaped Our World" and was awarded the Barnes & Noble Discover Prize, the Desmond Elliott Prize, the Authors' Club Best First Novel Award, and the McKitterick Prize. She was born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago. She studied physics at Brown University and later received an MA in creative writing at Goldsmiths, University of London. Adam lives in London.