The Road from Belhaven
A novel
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3.9 • 22 Ratings
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- $6.99
Publisher 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
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the powerful latest from Livesey (The Boy in the Field), an orphan raised on her grandparents' Belhaven farm in 19th-century Scotland struggles with her secret gift of second sight. Lizzie Craig sees images of calamities before they occur (a person felled by a swarm of bees, an animal dying). To her dismay, her warnings go unheeded. When she's 16, a young tailor's apprentice named Louis Hunter visits Belhaven from Glasgow. Lizzy falls in love with Louis and soon joins him in Glasgow, where she takes a position as a housemaid. Though she's devoted to him, he's reluctant to marry, even after Lizzy gets pregnant. With the sociological complexity of an Edith Wharton novel, Livesey portrays Lizzy butting up against gendered restrictions on her freedom, such as her inability to inherit Belhaven from her grandparents. After several devastating blows, Lizzy finally manages to find her path by using her gift. Sure-handed depictions of nature abound ("winter came like a fist"), as do textured glimpses of Lizzie's inner life ("She felt a sudden longing for this person she did not remember who could make thrushes sing and had boldly run away to Gretna Green"). The vitality of Glaswegian life is captured with scenes at the Tam O' Shanter Tavern, where Louis occasionally sings and Lizzy takes part in dances and dramas. Throughout, Livesey's lyrical perfection comes at no expense to the plot, which barrels like a runaway train. This is a gem.
