Mrs Engels - Hardcover

Gavin McCrea

3.23

1,235 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1922247952 ISBN 13: 9781922247957

Publisher: Scribe Publications, 2015

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Longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award and the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

In September 1870 a train leaves Manchester bound for London. On board is Lizzie Burns, a poor worker from the Irish slums, who is embarking on the journey that will change her forever. Sitting in the first-class carriage beside her lover, the wealthy mill-owner Frederick Engels, the vision of a life of peace and comfort takes shape before her eyes: finally, at nearly fifty, she is to be the lady of a house and the wife to a man. Perhaps now she can put the difficulties of the past behind her, and be happy?

In Gavin McCrea's stunning debut novel, we follow Lizzie as the promise of an easy existence in the capital slips from her view, and as she gains, in its place, a profound understanding of herself and of the world. While Frederick and his friend Karl Marx try to spur revolution among the working classes, Lizzie is compelled to undertake a revolution of another kind: of the heart and the soul. Haunted by her first love (a revolutionary Irishman); burdened by a sense of duty to right past mistakes; and torn between a desire for independence and the pragmatic need to be taken care of, Lizzie learns, as she says, that the world doesn't happen how you think it will. The secret is to soften to it, and to take its blows.

Wry, astute and often hilarious, Lizzie is as compelling and charismatic a figure as ever walked the streets of Victorian England, or its novels. In giving her renewed life, Gavin McCrea earns his place in the pantheon of great debut novelists.

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Review:

An Amazon Best Book of October 2015: If I told you that this book was about a poor, uneducated woman who had a lifelong affair with a rich and powerful man – but ultimately was the one to teach him a few things about life, you might assume it was your basic star-crossed lover rom-com. But then if I told you it was set in 19th century England, that the woman was an illiterate worker in the factory owned by the rich man’s family – well, you might get worried. Don’t. Mrs. Engels --which begins with the provocative, Jane Austen-esque line, “No one understands men better than the women they don’t marry, and my own opinion... is that the difference between one man and another doesn’t amount to much.” – is an irresistible historical novel based on Lizzie Burns, the real life common law wife of Friedrich Engels, the industrialist turned Communist collaborator of Karl Marx. But don’t let the tony political pedigrees here scare you: Lord knows Lizzie doesn’t. Instead, she tells off the snooty shopkeepers, befriends the misunderstood household “help,” and generally reminds her beloved of his all-too-human roots. (Note: lots of sex, of the sweaty, non-air brushed kind, helps.) The fact that she was a real person who lived in another century and that her lover was a famous man is beside the point; thanks to Lizzie’s clear, strong voice and McCrea’s assured storytelling, Mrs. Engels emerges as an earthy everywoman, an Eliza Doolittle minus the kitsch, a character for the ages. --Sara Nelson

About the Author:

Gavin McCrea was born in Dublin in 1978 and has since travelled widely, living in New York, Japan, and Italy, among other places. He holds an M.A. from University College Dublin, and an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of East Anglia. He currently lives in London, England and northern Spain.

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