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What Time is Love?

1947. 1967. 1987.
When Violet and Albert first meet, they are always twenty.

Three decades.

Over the years, Violet and Albert’s lives collide again and again: beneath Oxford’s spires, on the rolling hills around Abergavenny, in stately homes and in feminist squats. And as each decade ends, a new love story begins…

Two people.

Together, they are electric and the world is glittering with possibility. But against the shifting times of each era, Violet and Albert must overcome differences in class, gender, privilege and ambition. Each time their lives entwine, it will change everything.

One moment is all it takes…

As their eyes first meet, for a split-second it’s as if the clocks have stopped. Nothing else matters. Yet whichever decade brings them together, Violet and Albert are soon forced to question: what if they met the right person at the wrong time?

 

Praise for What Time is Love?:

"A startlingly great debut. Holly's beautiful prose smoulders, crackles and roars, but it's the storytelling that really astonishes. Propulsive, immersive, a book you can really live in. This book is masterfully crafted, brilliantly socially observed, but most of all it's a dazzlingly and painfully resonant exploration of the way women live, and how our freedom must be cherished and protected." Daisy Buchanan

"What Time is Love? is not only a beautifully told love story but also a fascinating account of the changing social mores of the 20th century. I found it delightful, insightful and immersive." Kate Eberlen

"A fiercely original novel on the powerful effect circumstance and timing has on life, on love. A brave and astute write on politics, with feisty and complex protagonists in Albert and Violet, What Time Is Love? skilfully excavates the great questions of our modern age; the battle for equality, the difficulty that is marriage and the inter-generational effects of class on the individual. A wonderful, original and powerful debut by the very talented Holly Williams. She is wild and brilliant." Elaine Feeney

"A unique and wonderfully crafted debut, What Time Is Love? has it all - nostalgia and romance, captivating characters and stunning prose. It's a truly tender, thought-provoking exploration of what makes a relationship work - and of how, when it comes to love, timing is sometimes everything. An unforgettable story with writing that sparkles: a gem of a read." Holly Miller

"Holly Williams has written a stunning, skilful, deftly drawn, cockle-warmer of a novel that somehow sweeps you through half a century while feeling like a leisurely afternoon. Prose so good I couldn't stop underlining." Lauren Bravo



 

Territories: UK: Orion, ed. Charlotte Mursell; Croatia: Profil; France: Calmann-Lévy; Germany: dtv; Italy: Sperling & Kupfer; Netherlands: Ambo Anthos; Norway: Gursli Berg; Russia: Corpus; Serbia: Laguna; Turkey: Epsilon ; Ukraine: Vivat
Other Holly Williams Titles