The New Life

LARA FEIGEL, THE GUARDIAN (UK)

"...Crewe's virtuoso debut The New Life is one of the most embodied historical novels I have read ... Crewe's brilliance – in addition to his ability to make us feel the physical sensations – is in dramatising moral dilemmas with complexity and rigour. He's especially good at exploring the perennial conflict between private and public acts of courage and openness..."

JAMES CAHILL, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT (UK)

"...Atmospheric ... As much as for its story, The New Life is compelling for its stylistic flair. Crewe's taut prose is shot through with descriptive vividness ... Occasionally the measured quality of the writing induces the desire for some kind of rupture, a break (however transient) into a different register, though that impulse is of a piece with the psychological realism: we inhabit the characters' striving after some other state of being..."