Description

From the Women’s Prize for Fiction longlist and the Northern Writer’s Award Winner comes. . .

REMEMBERED

‘Compares with Toni Morrison’s Beloved’ Guardian

‘Powerful, unapologetic, revealing’ The Herald

‘This book feels vital for our time’ Irish Times

‘It’s haunting and militant and very visceral and compassionate’ Diana Evans

‘Some books both break your heart and set you free. Remembered will change you’ Rachel Edwards

It is 1910 and Philadelphia is burning . . .

The last place Spring wants to be is in the rundown, coloured section of a hospital surrounded by the groans of sick people and the ghost of her dead sister. But as her son Edward lays dying, she has no other choice.

There’re whispers that Edward drove a streetcar into a shop window. Some people think it was an accident, others claim that it was his fault, the police are certain that he was part of a darker agenda. Is he guilty? Can they find the truth?

All Spring knows is that time is running out. She has to tell him the story of how he came to be. With the help of her dead sister, newspaper clippings and reconstructed memories, she must find a way to get through to him. To shatter the silences that governed her life, she will do everything she can to lead him home.

Publisher Review

An affecting debut novel, a powerful exploration of slavery, motherhood and racial tensions * The i * Remembered is a vital read, and one that won't be forgotten any time soon * The Skinny * A searing history of slavery is combined with a startling interrogation of motherhood in this American debut . . . Painful, vital truth resounds in this accomplished work of fiction * Guardian * [Compares] with Toni Morrison's Beloved . . . Yvonne Battle-Felton's characters get under your skin * Observer * Important and timely * nb magazine * This scorching historical novel set in Philadelphia in 1910 tells the story of Spring, an emancipated slave forced into a reckoning with her past in order to help her dying son * i paper * Painful, vital truth resounds in this accomplished work of fiction * Guardian * Yvonne Battle-Felton's debut, Remembered, longlisted for the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction has been compared to Toni Morrison's seminal 1987 novel Beloved. And rightly so, since both are powerful, unapologetic, revealing works of historical fiction * The Herald * It's Philadelphia, 1910, and Battle-Felton's debut historical novel traces the story of Spring from the 1840s to the day of the crash, through the incomprehensible cruelties of not only slavery but the many decades that followed. * FT (Summer books of 2019) * Remembered has drawn comparisons with Toni Morrison's Beloved: both are unflinching and haunting in how they address the legacy of the slave trade. Battle-Felton's voice is entirely her own, however, and this book feels vital for our time . . . [this] debut is not an easy read and nor should it be. Fortunate are those of us that only experience such brutality in the pages of a book. Afterwards we emerge more enlightened with our hearts and minds expanded. Remembered will stay with you long after reading * Irish Times *