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Elizabeth Lowry was born in Washington, DC and educated in South Africa and England. She lives and works in Oxford. Her first novel, The Bellini Madonna, was published in 2008 to great acclaim; her second, Dark Water, was published in 2018 and longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. She is a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal.
Does art enhance life, or negate it? The painful question runs
through Lowry's portrait of Thomas Hardy, and produces a sombre,
delicate novel, finely judged and full of insight
*Hilary Mantel*
In The Chosen, Lowry conjures the torments of a writer's life
wonderfully. It is full of understanding, shrewd and often lyrical
- a thing of beauty and sadness.
*Alison Light, author of Mrs Woolf & the Servants*
Elizabeth Lowry writes like a dream; finely attuned to the hopes,
desires and secret hauntings of her characters, she brings them to
life like no other writer I know. Every new book from Lowry is a
rare treat, best devoured slowly.
*Marina Benjamin*
'[A] novel which is both a fascinating analysis of Hardy and a
powerful and exquisite work of art in its own right . . . her
writing is utterly without mercy while also being underpinned by
deep compassion . . . Lowry's view of marriage and, more
particularly, the creative life is almost unbearably bleak, but her
novel is glorious - the best that I have read in several years.
*Literary Review*
Hardy's doomed first marriage is the subject of this beautifully
rendered and poignant novel . . . The prose is exquisite . . .
Above all, like many of the best novelists, Lowry understands the
intricacies of the human heart.
*The Times*
In this exquisite imagining of the days after Emma's unexpected
death, The Chosen excavates Hardy's emotions . . . Felled by the
bitterness in her diaries . . .Hardy experiences 'a savage sense of
liberty' and overwhelming feelings of loss, beautifully described
in Lowry's bellclear, silvery prose.
*Daily Mail*
This novel is exquisitely written and powerfully perceptive, yet
never loses sight of its biographical nature.
*Country Life*
Deserves to be read by anyone interested in Thomas Hardy or in good
literature.
*Sherborne Times*
It's a remarkable, mesmeric piece of writing . . . an authentic cri
de coeur from a deeply reserved man. There are utterly remarkable
passages in The Chosen where something shifts, time seems to alter
and language starts to glow. It's rare and quite extraordinary. It
feels as though two levels of language like two currents of
different salinity are flowing across each other - the sensation is
one of looking through the 3rd person narration into Hardy's
innermost lived experience, and through or behind those the further
layer of the poems themselves, still fluid, in formation in the
mind.
*Andrew Greig, author of Rose Nicolson*
A stylistic tour de force . . . Miss this work of art -- and
cautionary tale against long-term gaslighting -- at your peril.
*Strong Words*
The Chosen combines psychological depth with prose of mesmerising
beauty. The result is an exquisite double portrait of a marriage
and a writer, and the elusively complex relationship between the
two. This is a novel of tremendous range, from the elegiac to the
humorous to the sublime. Vladimir Nabokov described the best of
fiction as "a game of intricate enchantment and deception". In this
heartbreaking, life-affirming exploration of the perversity of the
human heart and the paradox of creativity, Elizabeth Lowry shows
herself the mistress of both.
*Financial Times*
With remarkable steadiness and fine judgment, Elizabeth Lowry goes
right into the midst of this legendary literary maelstrom and opens
a space for fiction . . . Slowly and feelingly, the novel pores
over questions about the costs of art, refusing to shout out
answers, letting many perspectives tell upon each other . . . Where
Poems of 1912-13 intensify around single visions, utterly
concentrated, The Chosen works by looking around at everything
going on in the house. Max Gate is vividly realised in all its
tree-shadowed gloominess, gobbling coal and effort, too large yet
grimly confining.
*Guardian*
A lyrical meditation on love and literary inspiration. Lowry's
richly evocative novel plunges the reader into Hardy's day-to-day
life at Max Gate, the Dorset house he built for himself, as he
rakes over the ashes of his strained marriage and channels his
grief into the extraordinary outpouring of creativity that was the
"Poems of 1912-13".
*Financial Times (Best Summer Books 2022)*
A wise and beautifully written book
*The Times*
Lowry's theme is the underside of artistic devotion - the
monstrousness of the writing life for those closest, or trying to
be. In the year in which we lost Hilary Mantel, it's a real joy to
have discovered in Elizabeth Lowry another meticulous, restrained
and humane chronicler of lives past. I'll be looking out for more
of her work.
*The Lonely Crowd (Book of the Year)*
An extraordinary feat of imagination, perception and empathy
*Irish Times*
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