Goodnight, Vivienne, Goodnight

From one of our finest writers - winner of the Miles Franklin, the Commonwealth Writers Prize and the Prime Minister's Literary Award - comes a wistful and emotional story that imagines a happier ending for the mercurial and complicated Vivienne Haigh-Wood, first wife of the great poet, TS Eliot.

London, June 1940. Vivienne Haigh-Wood, the mercurial wife of celebrated poet T.S. Eliot, is about to effect a daring escape from Northumberland House, the private asylum where she has been held for the past three years. There is an old law, Vivienne has been told, that if you can break out of an asylum and stay free for thirty days, they can't make you go back. But closing in on Vivienne is the young detective sergeant Stephen Minter, a man with a hidden past of his own, who has orders to track her down ...

With this novel, Steven Carroll completes his critically acclaimed, award-winning and much-loved Eliot Quartet. Goodnight, Vivienne, Goodnight is a delicate dance between what was and what might have been, which imagines a wholly different and entirely satisfying ending to Vivienne's story. This is an absorbing, poignant, deeply felt and intensely moving novel of beginnings, endings and reinvention, about the aftermath of a marriage, and the reassembling of a broken woman.

'Carroll's prose has a sublime rhythmic quality ... almost as if he has sung the words on the page' Australian Book Review

'As always with Carroll, it is ... the richness of ideas, the allusive, measured prose ... that captivate the reader' Adelaide Advertiser

Steven Carroll is the multi-award winning author of fifteen novels including A World of Other People (2013), which was the joint winner of the Prime Minister's Literary Award, and The Time We Have Taken (2007), which was the winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize for the SE Asia and Pacific Region and the Miles Franklin Award in 2008. Forever Young (2015) was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award and the Prime Minister's Literary Award in 2016. A New England Affair (2017) was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier's Literary Award in 2018 and The Year of the Beast (2019) was longlisted for the 2020 Voss Literary Prize. His most recent novel, Goodnight, Vivienne, Goodnight was longlisted for the 2022 ARA Historical Novel Prize and for the 2023 Voss Literary Prize.Steven lives in Melbourne with his partner, the author Fiona Capp, and their son.

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.