Strange Heart Beating

208 pages

English language

Published 2017 by Granta Books.

ISBN:: 978-1-78378-349-6

(1 review)

Seb's beautiful, beloved wife Leda has been killed by a swan. Sorting through her belongings after her death, he comes across a packet of unopened letters from Olaf, a man whom Leda had never mentioned. Floundering professionally and sunk by grief, he decides to travel to Leda's home village in Latvia to patch her story together. But with each new person that he turns to for answers, Seb is met instead by more questions about Leda, her past and their life together. A darkly funny, seductive novel that confronts the black undercurrent of possession inherent in love, Strange Heart Beating is a breathtaking debut from an author whose vision is both acerbic and tender.

1 edition

ralentina reviewed Strange Heart Beating by Eli Goldstone

4 stars

Strange Heart Beating is beautifully written, and reads easily even though the plot is not in a rush of going anywhere. Seb, recently widowed and grieving, embarks on a trip to Latvia to get to retrospectively know his late wife, and the life she shed before moving to the UK. The story is laced through with allusions to mythology and symbolism, which usually annoy the hell out of me, but here felt well-paced and subtle enough. As I was reading, I realised I haven't read many books written by a woman from the perspective of a man. Somehow, I though the portrayal of masculinity that emerges from the book - hurt and restless - was quite perceptive.

Subjects

Fiction
London
Europe