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  • Hodder & Stoughton

Love Songs and Lies

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Sally, Kate and Marienka. Three young women who meet as undergraduates in 1970s Oxford and share their romantically shabby canalside house with Max Bellinger - clever, attractive, enigmatic Max.

Sally - our narrator - idolises Max, who is something of an homme fatale. But it is Max's wayward rock singer brother, Marty, who is to play the most important role in her life, when one of his songs (for which she provided the lyrics) becomes an unexpected hit.

Although their paths diverge once they leave Oxford, Sally stays in touch with all the housemates and their lives remain interwoven throughout the momentous second half of the twentieth century.

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Praise for Love Songs and Lies

  • A bouncy and enlightening read - Good HousekeepingThe story is cleverly and compellingly told, full of perceptive insights and reflections, the Seventies period details are squirmingly familiar, the influence of Eng. Lit on a developing emotional consciousness is sensitively woven in, the parallel lives of students then and now are neatly drawn - SpectatorPurves is a fine writer and the slow pace at the start of the novel proves well pitched to heighten the rising tension of the story - ShePurves is good on modern morality, its subtle seductions and its potential to disrupt - Saga

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Libby Purves

Libby Purves

Libby Purves is a writer and also a broadcaster who has presented the talk programme Midweek on Radio 4 since 1984 and formerly presented Today. She is a main columnist on the Times and in 1999 was named the Granada "What the Papers Say" Columnist of the Year, and awarded a O.B.E for services to journalism. She lives in Suffolk with her husband the broadcaster and writer Paul Heiney.

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