On This Spot Fell One Tear of Love

Tender, thoughtful, beautifully written, this is a wonderful and gentle memoir about childhood and class, loss and memory - I loved it – Kate MosseI relished reading this loving, generous and unflinching recollection of the life cycle of a suburban family and the secrets the parents hid from their children. It is quietly elegant and deeply reflective – Bernardine EvaristoA mystery, a love letter, a family history, this astonishing memoir is written with compassion and humour, a tribute to two people caught in the conventions of the time and a lesson in forgiveness and understanding. A wonderful book by a great writer – Kit de WaalWhen the foreword gives you goosebumps, you know you’re on a winner … This isn’t just a fabulous trip down memory lane, it’s a brilliant exploration of norms and expectations of that time, a lens on how those norms and expectations affected ordinary people and how, with the slightest shift, our family trees could have grown so very differently. It’s also the most beautiful love story … I adored every single page, and it is, quite simply, one of the most beautiful memoirs I have ever read … Reading this book felt like sitting with a friend and having a truly wonderful conversation. The kind of conversation you don’t want to end – Joanna CannonWhat a brave book, haunting, visceral and beautifully written - it will surely stir everyone’s feelings around family and the hazy depths of the lives behind us – DBC PierreTender and clear-eyed, Doughty opens the Pandora’s box of 1950s England, class, family and loss and forbidden love and - oh god - that great mysterious secret: our parents before us. It will make you laugh and make you cry – Louisa YoungBeautiful and oddly thrilling: a heartfelt meditation on something we all know but rarely talk about - the fact that people, even those closest to us, are ultimately unknowable, that our pasts make strangers of us all. I was very moved and stayed up late into the night to finish it – Julie Myerson

Louise Doughty’s novels include Platform Seven, recently filmed for ITV; Black Water, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; the bestseller Apple Tree Yard, which was adapted for BBC One; and Whatever You Love, nominated for the Costa Novel Award and the Women’s Prize for Fiction. She has been nominated for many other prizes including the Sunday Times Short Story Prize and the CWA Silver Dagger, along with creating and writing the hit BBC drama Crossfire. Her work has been translated into thirty languages. She lives in London.

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