Amanda: A Novel

★ “Some combination of Edna O’Brien, Muriel Spark, and maybe a pinch of Jane Austen... Mesmerizing, haunting, hopeful.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

Post-WWI England is a nation in upheaval, its foundations shaken by the Great War and the collapse of genteel Edwardian society. The streets are haunted by shell-shocked men, runaways, mutilated veterans, damned poets, and revolutionaries.

Marion has fled Galway for Oxford after her elopement with a violent man ended violently. In the City of Dreaming Spires, where the cobbled streets, barely lit pubs, and underground book presses hum with restless energy, she meets Jamie, a damaged soul like her who is struggling to recover from his experiences at the front. He alone sees her scars. She alone knows his secret name. Their love is wild, anarchic, dangerous, absolute. Everything, it seems, is at stake. When the “talkers” in Marion’s head get too loud and the circumstances of her life too dire, she disappears, leaving Jamie bereft and without word. But their love is like gravity—an undeniable force pitted against the dark forces that would keep them apart.

At once an erotic drama, a formally inventive romantic epic, and a historical novel written with an emotional intensity that bears comparison to classics like Wuthering Heights, Patrick Hamilton’s Hangover Square, and Madame Bovary, Amanda is a poignant, atmospheric meditation on love, trauma, and redemption. H.S. Cross delivers an unforgettable novel on the infinite varieties of human experience.