I loved Absolutely & Forever by Rose Tremain. It took me straight back to my teenage years and first love. Only 177 pages, I quickly lost myself in the story of Marianne Clifford’s love for Simon Hurst and the impact this has on the rest of her life. 
Marianne is fifteen when she falls head over heels in love. Adrift, unsure who she is, not fitting in at home, not fitting in at school, Marianne knows Simon is her future, absolutely and forever. He drives a small blue car, he’s in his final year at school and will go up to Oxford. He is so golden and successful she know that with him, her life will be happy. So when things go wrong for Simon, they go wrong for Marianne too.
Tremain’s writing is sublime, her description so light-handed and to the point. Told in Marianne’s voice, we see her youth and inexperience develop into loss and pragmatism. Her love, bordering on obsession, for Simon overlays everything. Desperate to leave behind the stifling family home and her parents, who she always seems to disappoint, she goes to London to make something of herself. Make what, she doesn’t know. It is Sixties London. ‘It seemed to me that everybody in that place had undergone a metamorphosis which made them appear entirely beautiful in a deranged kind of way.’ The women wear tiny little slanty boxes for skirts, and the men look like lone gazelles.
The voice of Marianne pulled me in from the first page, she is refreshing, engaging, stubbornly different. Sad in some places, laugh out loud in others. A novel to re-read time and again.
Read my reviews of these other novels by Rose Tremain:-
ISLANDS OF MERCY
LILY
THE GUSTAV SONATA
THE HOUSEKEEPER
If you like this, try:-
‘The Sleeping Beauty’ by Elizabeth Taylor
‘Ferney’ by James Long
‘Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day’ by Winfred Watson
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#BookReview ABSOLUTELY & FOREVER by Rose Tremain via https://wp.me/p2ZHJe-8Hb @SandraDanby
COMING SOON… THE NEXT BOOK I REVIEW WILL BE:- 
