The Scrapbook

(Paperback)

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A story of a consuming first love haunted by European history and family memory, and inspired by real events For years after I tried to tell myself that what happened between us was hardly worth remembering. Others told me the same. But now I write the truth. He was everything to me then. Everything. Harvard, 1996. Anna is about to graduate when she meets Christoph, a German student visiting campus. They only spend a week together - discussing art, ideas and history - but it is long enough for Anna to fall desperately in love. Anna begins to visit Christoph in Germany. As she tries to understand the young, elegant man who fascinates her, he reveals his country to her. Germany is still reckoning with the Holocaust and its pretty new squares and grand facades belie its recent history and the war's destruction. Christoph condemns his country's actions but remains vague about the part his own grandparents played. Anna's grandfather, meanwhile, was an American GI who took photos of the end of the war, photos that capture its horror, preserved in a scrapbook only Anna has seen. Anna wants to believe in Christoph and the future he promises her but as their relationship becomes increasingly unsettling, she must face up to everything she has been unwilling to see, and everything Christoph has chosen to ignore. Inspired by a real-life discovery, this is a story of a consuming love haunted by European history and inherited guilt, for readers of Deborah Levy, Lauren Elkin and Jenny Erpenbeck.

Reviews

'A first-class biography . . . Each chapter reads with the ease of a novel . . . I couldn't put it down' * The Times, praise for Red Comet *
'Heather Clark's meticulous research, sweeping up every scrap, deftly integrates drafts, unpublished pieces, stories and critiques of poems...to make this extraordinary story more moving than ever' * Daily Telegraph, praise for Red Comet *
'Heather Clark writes with a rare empathy and understanding of her subject... Red Comet reveals Plath as she ought to be seen' * Times Literary Supplement, praise for Red Comet *
'Surely the final, the definitive, biography of Sylvia Plath' * Guardian, praise for Red Comet *
'One of the most beautiful biographies I've ever read' -- Glennon Doyle, praise for Red Comet

Author Bio

Heather Clark is the author of four works of non-fiction, including Red Comet- The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath (published by Jonathan Cape), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the LA Times Book Prize in Biography, and was the winner of the Slightly Foxed Prize and the Truman Capote Prize (awarded by the Iowa Writers' Workshop). It was a Book of the Year in the Guardian, Daily Telegraph, Times and New York Times. Her work has appeared in publications including the New York Times, Time, Lit Hub, and TLS. She has recently received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the New York Public Library's Cullman Centre.