You Can Live Forever

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Description

'Boisterous and colourful ... Alice is a plucky and memorable heroine' - Observer Winner of the Betty Trask Award. 'Few disappointments compare to the loss of eternity...' Alice is going to live forever. She's been promised this since childhood. All she has to do is follow the true religion of The Unbelievable Potential of Human Beings. Her mother is a pillar of the church and her brother is a deacon. But Alice is faltering, she's losing the knack of living forever. Things aren't helped by her father William, a part-time arsonist, rejected husband, ladies' man and fraudster, or by Jude, an attractive fellow church-goer with a longing for womankind. In this intricate and satisfying debut, which was featured on BBC Radio 5 Live as Book of the Month, Julie Maxwell writes with dry, dark humour, wit and intelligence about sex and the sect and the heart of darkness. Winner of the Betty Trask Award.

Reviews

A fine novel that mixes comedy and darkness the way someone in China once mixed saltpetre and charcoal to produce gunpowder. Reading this novel is like watching a cordite fuse racing towards its dark destination -- Craig Raine
Maxwell demonstrates wit, elegance and great insight...hilarious...excellent * Literary Review *
You Can Live Forever boasts a down-to-earth charm that is relentlessly witty * Time Out *
A quirky sense of humour and sharp intelligence * Scotland on Sunday *
Maxwell writes with a vast, tenacious intellect * The Herald *

Author Bio

Julie Maxwell was a Fellow and Lecturer in English at Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge. She has published articles on Shakespeare, and on the English Bible. She now lives in Oxford and is currently working on a new novel. You Can Live Forever, her first novel, won the Betty Trask Award.