Spring

'The forensic scrutiny of every aspect of a fledgling relationship, from both points of view, is one of the many delights of Spring... Devastatingly powerful...also extremely funny, in that understated, unexpected way that makes you burst into sudden noise in public places and alarm those around you. Szalay's dialogue is pithy and sharp; his peripheral characters lip-smackingly delicious' Independent on SundayJames and Katherine meet at a wedding in London in 2006, towards the end of the money for nothing years. James is a man with a varied past - entrepreneur, estate agent, film producer, former dot-com millionaire - now living alone in a flat in Bloomsbury; Katherine is separated from her paparazzo husband and working in an interim job at a luxury hotel. They exchange numbers and meet the following week, but from then on not much goes according to the script... 'Spring confirms that [Szalay] is a writer with the whole range of talents...often outstanding' Sunday Times'Anyone can write lightly about sunshine or darkly about the night, but it takes a novelist of Szalay's skill and ambition to write with brilliance about twilight. His are emotional states that play out to novel length. This is one of those books that leaves you not only with admiration for the novelist, but also with a sense of wonder about the precision of the novel form itself' Chris Cleave, Guardian'A texture of truthfulness quite unlike that of any other fiction about London that I know...a very beautifully poised novel'David Sexton, Evening Standard'A sharp, truthful, funny portrait of contemporary manners that is also unexpectedly moving' Sunday Times