Faber & Faber Partita Broché

The story of a brief, passionate, life-changing love affair, wrapped up in what might be the greatest romance of all: our eternal human longing for art and beauty.

FROM THE GLOBAL BESTSELLING AUTHOR

'[Kingsolver] reminds us that a novel can be wildly entertaining and still have a social conscience' NEW YORK TIMES, '100 Best Books of the 21st Century' (on Demon Copperhead)

You've taken Demon to your hearts, prepare for another 'emotionally raw, riotously entertaining' read as you meet Livia.

A song without any answer in it? That's the sound of waiting.

Livia Bohusz misses her brother, Cyrus. Unmoored by his death, and the stifling silence of the family farm, eleven-year-old Livia has no choice but to survive. Her only solace: music, an escape in the quiet rapture piano practice brings. The promise of a new life her talent offers, intoxicating.

So when Livia starts her college music scholarship it feels as if a new life might begin. Immersing herself in her passions in a world where she excels, even as she struggles to fit in with more urbane classmates, she glimpses the possibilities of a life beyond the farm and her parents.

Then one springtime, as the smell of reviving grass and crocuses and the sounds of songbirds fill the air, Livia catches a glimpse of shirt sleeves rolled to the elbow, muscles you wouldn't miss in the rear view:

'Who is that man?'

It is a question Livia may come to wish she had never asked.

From one of the greatest writers alive comes Livia's story, Partita, both a coming-of-age narrative and an examination of midlife hopes and regrets, a novel as simple as love and longing, as touching, complex and finely tuned as the music it celebrates.

Readers love Barbara Kingsolver:
'Barbara Kingsolver's way with words is beyond description!'
'That's the magic of Barbara Kingsolver I guess - to make you laugh in one line and then absolutely wreck you in the next. What a genius'
'I love Kingsolver because I never know where she will go next but it will always be somewhere that I've never been before'
'Barbara Kingsolver has an understanding of the human condition and the abuses inflicted by an unjust society upon those who do not deserve that'
'A trademark ability to tell a story with empathy'
'One of those writers who somehow can produce writing that sounds as natural as talking and yet that somehow comes out as poetry'
'Kingsolver is a magician with words'