The New Life

TOM CREWE Press Reviews

'This is a corker... one of the literary debuts of the year' - The Times,Books to Look Out For 2023*

'It is a pleasure to discover a young novelist with such a wise sensibility - and also, one who can construct such convincing characters.' - Sunday Times

'The New Life is filled with nuance and tenderness, steeped in the atmosphere of late nineteenth century London, a world on the brink of social and sexual change. Tom Crewe's brilliant novel dramatizes the relationship between the visionary and the brave, charting the lives of men and women who inspired not only political progress but an entire new way of living and loving.' -- Colm Toibin

'Tom Crewe's virtuoso debut The New Life is one of the most embodied historical novels I have read . . . Lives and experience demand richer forms of storytelling, and this is just what Crewe has given us' -- Lara Feigel - Guardian

'An excellent debut . . . It's extraordinary to think that this impeccably crafted, lyrically phrased and muscular book is Crewe's first . . . a brilliant evocation of the radical politics of turn-of-the-century Britain' - Michael Donkor, Guardian

'Emotionally vivid and erotically charged, The New Life brilliantly reveals a 'seething and boiling' world of 'loneliness and anger and lust,' as Crewe's complicated, compelling protagonists battle the restrictive mores of the day' - Daily Mail

'Electrifying. Tom Crewe's forensic love of the physical puts the body back into history and makes the past a living, changing place -- Anne Enright Powerful themes and lovingly polished prose . . . a fictional debut of rare quality and promise'  - Daily Telegraph

'Intense and precise . . . It is refreshing to find any contemporary novel, let alone a debut, which is first and foremost one of ideas' - Financial Times

Superb . . . Remarkably sensuous and intimate - Spectator