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  • Published: 5 January 2012
  • ISBN: 9781446484685
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 288

All is Song




A fiercely intelligent and moving second novel from the author of the acclaimed The Wilderness.

Leonard is alone and rootless, returning to London after his father's death. He moves in with his distant brother William and his family, hoping to renew their friendship but learning to drop his expectations of brotherhood. William is a former lecturer and activist who now runs informal meetings with ex-students. He is defiantly unworldly and forever questioning.
When a young student follows William's arguments to a shocking conclusion, it appears William has already set his own fate in motion. Against a backdrop of tabloid frenzy, Leonard can only watch as William embraces the danger in the only way he knows how, which threatens to consume not only himself, but his entire family.

  • Published: 5 January 2012
  • ISBN: 9781446484685
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 288

About the author

Samantha Harvey

Samantha Harvey is the author of The Wilderness, All Is Song, Dear Thief and The Western Wind. She appeared on the longlists for the Bailey’s Prize and the Man Booker, and the shortlists of the James Tait Black Award, the Orange Prize, the Guardian First Book Award and the Walter Scott Prize. The Wilderness won the Betty Trask Award in 2009. She is a tutor on the MA course in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.

Also by Samantha Harvey

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Praise for All is Song

A fine study of the nature and strength of family ties and the morality, or otherwise, of conforming where it matters

Kate Saunders, The Times

A moving novel about family duty and friendship set against a London backdrop of national unrest

Grazia

Deftly controlled and exquisitely measured

Brian Donaldson, The List

Graceful and full of sharp observation and moments of understated pathos

Carol Birch, Guardian

Harvey's slow, intense thoughtfulness feels positively Woolfean at times. She thinks deeply, and writes beautifully about these thoughts.

Lucy Atkins, Sunday Times

Harvey's talent is in the details of both characters and relationships that seem trivial but are telling ... Harvey is a master of language, adept at both Wildean one-liners ... and more profound expression

Rosamund Urwin, Evening Standard

How would Socrates get on in 21st century Britain? This is the question at the heart of Samantha Harvey's ambitious second novel

James Walton, Daily Mail

In this Socrates-like story Samantha Harvey examines a dramatic sibling relationship whilst questioning the place of philosophy in modern life

Big Issue in the North

Intense, rewarding and bracingly serious

Adrian Turpin, Financial Times

Lovely observations on a sibling relationship

Lesley McDowell, Glasgow Sunday Herald

Profoundly beautiful, cathartic writing.

Catherine Taylor, Daily Telegraph

The beauty of the intense plot lies in its economy. The novel is so finely tuned, it is hard to find any passage where she is not fully in control. No matter how dramatic the events she describes, they never drown the ideas being discussed.

Anna Aslanyan, Literary Review

There's still something compelling in the way Harvey resists the easy and the obvious. The result is a novel of both depth and defiance

Natasha Tripney, Observer

This beautifully written composition does that rare thing, of provoking free thought, while scrutinising the far-reaching repercussions of such rebellious activity

Freya McClelland, Independent

This is a novel of ideas that also creates believable characters and explores complex relationships. Harvey's prose is graceful and unhurried, full of sharp observation and moments of subtly understated pathos

Carol Birch, Guardian