Overview

Wife. Mother. Spy. Eighteen-year-old Laura Leverett arrives from America for a new life in England. At the side-lines of her cousin’s glamorous gatherings, Laura hungers for someone with whom she can discuss the new political ideas sweeping through London. Edward Last is the kindred spirit Laura has been waiting for. But the secret he is carrying will test Laura’s ideals to their limits and take them across oceans before tearing them apart…

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9780008113773

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Reviews

Praise for A QUIET LIFE: 'A superb, sophisticated and radical book that refreshes the parts other spy novels cannot reach ... Meticulously researched and disarmingly told, A Quiet Life is historical fiction at its best, finding vast uncharted territories within a period we might have thought we knew.' Chris Cleave, author of THE OTHER HAND and EVERYONE BRAVE IS FORGIVEN 'A writer of game-changing skill and sensitivity. Few novelists can combine serious feminism with romance and adventure and make it work ... a literary page-turner' THE TIMES 'Impressive and rewarding' DAILY MAIL 'Evokes the period with brilliant precision and detail' THE SUNDAY TIMES 'Impressive ... easily competing with the claims of such experienced novelists as Sebastian Faulks and William Boyd to the territory' GUARDIAN 'A troubling, understated novel, almost hypnotic in the completeness with which it inhabits the mind of its impressionable central character' SARAH WATERS Best Books of the Summer, GUARDIAN 'Brilliant' JULIE MYERSON, Best Books of the Summer, GUARDIAN 'Elegant, slow-burning... leaving you with no choice but to read on' METRO 'A tour de force. Walter has taken us inside a life in hiding, in a novel about love, about political ideals and about the entrapment both create' Linda Grant 'A brilliant observer of period, place and upper-class mores' DAILY MAIL 'Riveting' GOOD HOUSEKEEPING 'The novel really sings' INDEPENDENT 'This thrilling tale of sacrifice, love, secrets, and identity is an absorbing debut novel from the feminist author of Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism' STYLIST 'As well as having a gift for cool, elegant phrasing, and a fine sensitivity to psychology ... Walter proves to be a hardworking and accomplished storyteller' GUARDIAN 'This ambitious debut fuses espionage, wartime romance, and enquiry into female identity and power' MAIL ON SUNDAY

Praise for A QUIET LIFE: 'A superb, sophisticated and radical book that refreshes the parts other spy novels cannot reach. Natasha Walter effects a relentless and utterly believable transformation in her heroine, from ingenue to insider hiding in the blind spot of the male gaze. Meticulously researched and disarmingly told, A Quiet Life is historical fiction at its best, finding vast uncharted territories within a period we might have thought we knew.' Chris Cleave, author of THE OTHER HAND and EVERYONE BRAVE IS FORGIVEN 'A writer of game-changing skill and sensitivity. Few novelists can combine serious feminism with romance and adventure and make it work ... a literary page-turner' THE TIMES 'Impressive and rewarding' DAILY MAIL 'Evokes the period with brilliant precision and detail' THE SUNDAY TIMES 'Impressive. easily competing with the claims of such experienced novelists as Sebastian Faulks and William Boyd to the territory' GUARDIAN 'A troubling, understated novel, almost hypnotic in the completeness with which it inhabits the mind of its impressionable central character' SARAH WATERS Best Books of the Summer, GUARDIAN 'Brilliant' JULIE MYERSON, Best Books of the Summer, GUARDIAN 'Elegant, slow-burning... leaving you with no choice but to read on' METRO 'A tour de force. Walter has taken us inside a life in hiding, in a novel about love, about political ideals and about the entrapment both create' Linda Grant

Author Information

Natasha Walter is the author of two non-fiction books, The New Feminism and Living Dolls: the Return of Sexism. She has worked as a journalist, columnist and reviewer for the Guardian, the Observer and the Independent, and is the founder of the charity Women for Refugee Women. She lives in London with her partner and their two children. A Quiet Life is her first novel.

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