The Gustav Sonata

This is a perfect novel about life’s imperfection… Tremain is writing at the height of her inimitable powers… Remarkable and moving novel. – Kate Kellaway * Observer *The Gustav Sonata is a magnificent novel, heartbreaking, unsentimental and beautifully written, and it reinforces my opinion that there are few writers out there with the dexterity or emotional intelligence to rival that of the great Rose Tremain. – John Boyne * The Irish Times Beautifully tender and brilliantly written novel… A tale of the most powerful part of any friendship: love. **** * Stylist *In The Gustav Sonata, Tremain once again proves herself to be a writer of exceptional talent … Previous novels like The Road Home have already showcased her staggering sensitivity and capacity for empathy but they’re here again, magnificently undiminished. Tremain is a writer who understands every emotion … and it’s ultimately this understanding that has produced another exquisite book – Matt Cain * i *Tremain has the painterly genius of an Old Master, and she uses it to stunning effect… Glorious. – Melissa Katsoulis * The Times *Elegant and spare, the novel traces the subtle nuances between friendship and passion, betrayal and disappointment… Tremain shows how good intentions can result in suffering, and does so with grace and tenderness. – Fanny Blake * Daily Mail *Sentence by sentence, Rose Tremain’s fiction provides rich pleasures: she renders her worlds…with vivid specificity and economical elegance. In her new novel The Gustav Sonata, the textures of her characters’ surroundings are deftly drawn. – Claire Messud * Financial Times *Reveals Tremain at her very best. It is a powerful account of loss, but also of friendship, of its inequalities and its compromises. – Vanessa Berridge * Sunday Express *Tender, beautiful and finely characterized, this is the best book of the year so far for me * WI Life *Tremain is a resourceful writer… The Gustav Sonata is a short book that manages to tell a gripping story about human fallibility while offering a meditation on life, time and desire. – Pamela Norris * Literary Review *

Rose Tremain’s novels and short stories have been published in thirty countries and have won many awards, including the Orange Prize (The Road Home), the Dylan Thomas Award (The Colonel’s Daughter and Other Stories), the Whitbread Novel of the Year (Music & Silence) the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and France’s Prix Femina (Sacred Country), and the South Bank Sky Arts Award (The Gustav Sonata). Her most recent novel is Absolutely and Forever (2023), which was a Sunday Times Book of the Year. Rose Tremain was made a CBE in 2007 and a Dame in 2020. She lives in Norfolk and London with the biographer, Richard Holmes.