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Catastrophically ill-suited for each other, and forever straddling a line between relative calm and explosive confrontation, Neve and her husband, Edwyn, live together in London. For the moment they have reached a place of peace in their relationship, but past battles have left scars. As Neve recalls the decisions that brought her to Edwyn, she describes other loves and other debts-from her bullying father and her self-involved mother, to a musician she struggled to forget. Drawing us into the battleground of this marriage, Gwendoline Riley tells a transfixing story of mistakes and misalliances, of helplessness and hostility, in which both husband and wife have played a part. Could this possibly be, nonetheless, a story of love? "At the heart of Gwendoline Riley's short, dark, funny novel is a marriage in which bullying self-pity and perplexed self-abasement collide in a series of savage little jousts that ought to be unbearable to witness, but are in fact mesmerizing and perversely tender." "Gwendoline Riley {is} a fascinating novelist…She takes a familiar theme of midlife minor angst and focuses in, closer and closer, until the banal becomes surreal, even beautiful. The effect is beguiling…First Love is an exquisite and combative piece of news from nowhere-which is everywhere, too." "Almost impossible to turn away from." "Gwendoline Riley writes beautifully and memorably. First Love is evocative, often funny, and very moving."

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