The Mystery of Love

(Paperback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

CONSTANCE WILDE'S MARRIAGE HAS ENDED. Making a new life in Europe, she reflects on her marriage with Oscar Wilde. Despite her family's warnings, his affairs and his spending, she knows they loved each other in their own way. In this witty and unsentimental reimagining, Andrew Meehan gives a voice to a woman often relegated to the footnotes of her husband's history, and gives new life to a marriage known for its uncertainty and torment.

Reviews

[An] imaginative novel about the relationship between Constance and Oscar Wilde * Belfast Telegraph *
Constance Wilde is a brilliantly companionable and reflective central character, and Meehan's sense of place and time is rock-solid. There's an ethereal note to the poetic delivery of Constance's story, and it makes for a pleasant pacing... What Meehan crucially appears to have captured are the various flavours of love that can be found in most marriages ...Yet even if The Mystery of Love wasn't written about these two enchanting figures, it's a wonderful read in its own right' * Irish Independent *
So powerfully authentic, it feels like biography... Vivid and intimate... Riveting and entertaining' * The Gloss Magazine *
The Mystery of Love lives up to its Wildean title, forensically examining the bond that endures in a marriage which is in almost every other way dysfunctional. And while it must be daunting to take on the master of the epigram, Meehan rises to the challenge, liberally dousing his text with irresistibly resonant and quotable passages * Herald *
The mystery of what draws people together through adversity and apparent incompatibility is very much at the heart of the book... The Mystery of Love is a lively addition to the Wilde canon, adding Constance's voice to the perception of the private side of the writer' * Irish Examiner *
Exquisitely written -- Anne Cunningham, Irish Sunday Independent
Imaginative and witty... This is a book that will appeal to dedicated Wilde enthusiasts' -- Elizabeth Fitzherbert, The Lady
Suitably unsentimental, it gives a voice to a woman often forgotten by literary history * Woman's Way *

Author Bio

Andrew Meehan is a well-known script writer and formerly Head of Development at the Irish Film Board. His fiction writing has been anthologised in Town and Country: The Faber Book of New Irish Stories and Winter Pages. His first novel One Star Awake was published in 2017. He is based in Dublin and Glasgow.