A moving, lyrical debut novel of motherhood, loss and the interconnected lives of two women during the dying days of the Second World War.

An astonishing debut novel of motherhood and loss in the dying days of the Second World War 'Moving, graceful... Violets has a compelling, quiet power all the way to its exquisitely affecting end' Megan Hunter, author of The Harpy and The End We Start From 'Stunning and original... Written in pristine prose, it reminded me of the possibilities of language' Elizabeth Macneal, author of The Doll Factory A young woman, Violet, lies in a hospital bed in the closing days of World War Two. Her pregnancy is over and she is no longer able to conceive. With her husband deployed in Burma and her friends caught up in transitory love affairs, she must find a way to put herself back together. In a small, watchful town in the Welsh valleys, another Violet contemplates the fate she shares with her unborn child. Unwed, an overseas posting offers a temporary way out. Plunged into the heat and disorder of Naples, her body begins to reveal the responsibility it carries even as she is drawn into the burnished circle of a charismatic new friend, Maggie. Between these two Violets, sung into being like a babe in a nursery rhyme: a son. As their lives begin to intertwine, a spellbinding story of women's courage emerges, suffused with power, lyricism and beauty, from an exhilarating new voice in British fiction. 'Beautiful, inventive and deeply moving' Liz Berry 'A novel of taut symmetry and dissonance... Alex Hyde's prose is rhythmically acute and emotionally layered. This is a subtle and daring book' Margo Jefferson

"Hypnotic... its accumulative power will have you sobbing by the end" - Evening Standard

"Graceful... inventive... Babies - unborn, unwanted, mourned, impossible to conceive - link both Violets in a narrative that is skilfully progressed over the course of this quietly surprising book" - The Irish Times

"[An] assured debut... Hyde's ingenious plotting is matched by the inventiveness of her buoyant, verse-like, subtly rhyming prose" - Daily Mail

"Short, expressionist... profound..." - Financial Times

"A tender meditation on motherhood...lyrical ... Hyde has found a way to make the past speak presciently to our times while also maintaining a playful relationship to a story that becomes unexpectedly moving, warm-hearted despite its flinty poetic prose" - Guardian

"An intricately composed and thoroughly corporeal portrait of the intertwined lives of two women during the war. Hyde is clearly a writer of talent and ambition: Violets suggests a glittering career ahead" - Observer

"[W]onderfully lyrical and insightful" - i Newsletter

"Violets is a touching tribute, deftly written, to all women left struggling in similar situations" - Spectator

"Loosely based on the adoption of the author's father, this lyrical, affecting début weaves together the stories of the two women involved...In stripped-back prose that focuses on the women's interior lives, this notable début is one for fans of Max Porter and Megan Hunter." - Bookseller

"A story of motherhood and loss told in lean, spare prose" - Bookseller

"Breathtaking... powerful and poignant" - Sunday Post

"A brilliantly constructed novel that says more by saying less... the poetic heartbeat of the narrative means that this is very much more than a partially fictionalised family memoir" - Radio Times

"A thoroughly humane, intimate, even celebratory novel... Its interwoven form and sympathetic tone, insists on connection" - TLS