LUCY

Lucy is a painter. She has everything: fame money and reputation. She also has Oscar. At least he has always been there. One fine day she will do something about that. It was as she says hardly a love affair more a kind of marriage. Perhaps even war-torn France is safe enough on the Oscar front. But Lucy is deceiving herself. Set before and after the second world war in London Edinburgh Saint-Valery-sur-Somme Dundee and a remote village in war-time France two painters struggle to come to terms with the casual brutality of war. A love story. Alan Kennedy's fourth novel - a masterly account of love loss and reconciliation. A haunting and captivating love story. A skilfully articulated plot which holds the reader from start to finish. The exploration of the young artist's creative imagination as she struggles to come to terms with the banal horrors of war and her own engulfing emotions. Deborah Swallow Märit Rausing Director Courtauld Institute of Art.