3.5
The Road from Belhaven
ByPublisher Description
From the New York Times best-selling author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy, a novel about a young woman whose gift of second sight complicates her coming of age in late-nineteenth-century Scotland
“Bewitching and seductive.” —Rebecca Makkai, author of I Have Some Questions for You • “A treasure: a writer who understands the magic and mysteries of the human soul." —Chris Bohjalian, author of Hour of the Witch • “This book is a cold, clear, perfect lake." —Lauren Groff, author of The Vaster Wilds
Growing up in the care of her grandparents on Belhaven Farm, Lizzie Craig discovers as a small child that she can see into the future. But her gift is selective—she doesn’t, for instance, see that she has an older sister who will come to join the family. As her “pictures” foretell various incidents and accidents, she begins to realize a painful truth: she may glimpse the future, but she can seldom change it.
Nor can Lizzie change the feelings that come when a young man named Louis, visiting Belhaven for the harvest, begins to court her. Why have the adults around her not revealed that the touch of a hand can change everything? After following Louis to Glasgow, though, she learns the limits of his devotion. Faced with a seemingly impossible choice, she makes a terrible mistake. But her second sight may allow her a second chance.
Luminous and transporting, The Road from Belhaven once again displays “the marvelous control of a writer who conjures equally well the tangible, sensory world . . . and the mysteries, stranger and wilder, that flicker at the border of that world.” —The Boston Globe
“Bewitching and seductive.” —Rebecca Makkai, author of I Have Some Questions for You • “A treasure: a writer who understands the magic and mysteries of the human soul." —Chris Bohjalian, author of Hour of the Witch • “This book is a cold, clear, perfect lake." —Lauren Groff, author of The Vaster Wilds
Growing up in the care of her grandparents on Belhaven Farm, Lizzie Craig discovers as a small child that she can see into the future. But her gift is selective—she doesn’t, for instance, see that she has an older sister who will come to join the family. As her “pictures” foretell various incidents and accidents, she begins to realize a painful truth: she may glimpse the future, but she can seldom change it.
Nor can Lizzie change the feelings that come when a young man named Louis, visiting Belhaven for the harvest, begins to court her. Why have the adults around her not revealed that the touch of a hand can change everything? After following Louis to Glasgow, though, she learns the limits of his devotion. Faced with a seemingly impossible choice, she makes a terrible mistake. But her second sight may allow her a second chance.
Luminous and transporting, The Road from Belhaven once again displays “the marvelous control of a writer who conjures equally well the tangible, sensory world . . . and the mysteries, stranger and wilder, that flicker at the border of that world.” —The Boston Globe
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThe Road from Belhaven Reviews
3.5
“i listed to think book so i can speak to the pace but the reader was sounded so pretty. This mad me nostalgic not in the sense that any of this is something i’ve experienced but in the way that all of these experiences where so human. It wasn’t glorified with some perfect ending or path that made everything feel just right.
It was very -life is is painful, hard, sad chose and somehow it’s still beautiful- vibe”
About Margot Livesey
MARGOT LIVESEY was born and grew up on the edge of the Scottish Highlands. She is the author of a collection of stories and nine other novels, including Eva Moves the Furniture, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, and The Boy in the Field. She has received awards from the NEA, the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is on the faculty of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Other books by Margot Livesey
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