Faber to publish the heart-aching second novel from award-winning Claire Adam
By Faber Editor, 6 December 2024
Faber is to publish Love Forms, the second novel from the award-winning author of Golden Child, Claire Adam. Picked as one of the BBC’s ‘100 Novels that Changed the World’, Golden Child won the Desmond Elliott Prize, the McKitterick Prize and the Authors Club Best First Novel Award.
Publisher Alex Bowler acquired UK & Commonwealth + EU (exc Canada) rights in Love Forms from Zoë Waldie at RCW. Publication is scheduled for 19 June 2025. Hogarth will publish in the US.
Trinidad, 1980: Dawn Bishop, aged 16, leaves her home and journeys across the sea to Venezuela. There, she gives birth to a baby girl, and leaves her with nuns to be given up for adoption.
Dawn tries to carry on with her life – a move to England, a marriage, a career, two sons, a divorce – but through it all, she still thinks of the child she had in Venezuela, and of what might have been.
When, forty years later, a woman from an internet forum gets in touch, saying that she might be Dawn’s long-lost daughter, it stirs up a complicated mix of feelings. Could this be the person to give form to all the love and care a mother has left to give?
Alex Bowler said:
‘Love Forms is a heart-splitting story of some of the fundamental themes of life; the dilemmas of love, of parenting, of regret, of aching to make things otherwise. Dawn is a character to root for and sometimes worry for. She, and the intensely moving novel that holds her, will resonate deeply with readers, and lead to conversation after conversation.’
Claire Adam said:
‘Every day, I’m reminded of what a privilege it is to be published by Faber: may it remain my home for many years to come.’
Claire Adam was born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago. She was educated in the US and now lives in London with her husband and two children. Golden Child was her first novel. It won the Desmond Elliott Prize, the McKitterick Prize, the Authors Club Best First Novel Award and was named one of BBC’s ‘100 Novels that Changed the World’.
In the heart-aching new novel from the author of the award-winning Golden Child, a mother searches for the daughter she left behind a lifetime ago.