Twelve Months and a Day

People die. Love doesn’t.

‘A bitter-sweet pang in my heart’ Monique Roffey

‘A beautiful book. Insanely romantic and utterly convincing’ Julie Myerson

‘A wonderful and inventive novel, sorrowful and hopeful in equal measure. It was a true pleasure to read’ Miranda Cowley Heller
‘Louisa Young is the great chronicler of romantic love and the pain of its loss’ Linda Grant

‘What a writer… so beautifully earthed in the everyday. Terrific’ Elizabeth Buchan

‘A skilfully calibrated love-after-death tale, it’s a four course feast of hearts broken, hearts mended, of songs, laughter, old regrets and fresh desire, that demands a major film deal’ Patrick Gale

‘A wonderful novel, charming and surprising, filled with loss and its triumphant opposites’ Susie Boyt

Rasmus and Jay, Roisin and Nico - two beautiful, ordinary love stories, cut short by death. Jay and Nico don’t even believe in ghosts, yet they seem to be… still here. Still in love with Rasmus and Roisin. And maddeningly powerless.

Both are incapable of leaving the living alone: Jay plays matchmaker, convinced that Rasmus and Roisin can heal each other; Nico, plagued by jealousy, doesn’t agree.

Rasmus and Roisin are just trying to navigate their newly widowed lives.

But all four of them are thinking the same thing: what is love, after death? What is it for? And what are we to do with it?

Moving and thought-provoking, playful and bittersweet, this is a Truly, Madly, Deeply for our times, showcasing one of Britain’s finest contemporary writers at her very best.