Your Still Beating Heart

(Paperback)

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Description

From its show-stopping opening scene, Keevils tightly plotted page turner is full of momentum and unforgettable characters. Moving, profound and ultimately joyful, it turns on an exceptionally clever twist and is as revealing in its psychological acuity as it is in its portrait of organised crime.

All it takes to change a life is a single moment. A random stabbing on a London bus leaves Eira stripped of a future that should have been hers and propels her into a life skewed out of all recognition.

In Prague, the city where she and her husband got engaged, the city where now she flees to in her grief, a chance meeting leads to an intriguing proposition. Theres a small job for someone like her: someone without a criminal record or personal connections; someone willing to take a minor risk. All she needs to do is pick something up, and drive back. Just once.

Only ever once.

Her mission takes her to a place where life is cheap and sordid deals are done. Risking her own life to save another, she must confront unspeakable evil and outrun those who would betray her.

Reviews

'Equally compelling and unsettling, this razor-sharp thriller reminds us, that for life to be truly lived, we must know death. In loss, we confront our true nature, though we might not recognise the person we discover. In his customary electric prose, Keevil cranks up the tension. You won't be able to look away.' - Katherine Stansfield. 'Tyler Keevil has a phenomenal ability as a novelist to bring together a compelling cast of loners and eccentrics. While this is on the face of it a pacy thriller, Keevil has fashioned out of the genre a story about stories and storytelling which is both memorable and heart-rending.' - Francesca Rhydderch. 'This tense thriller is set in Eastern Europe but more particularly in the landscape of the human heart, exploring its darkness and depravity as well as its capacity for love. The excitement builds until it reaches a climax of almost mythic ferocity and power.' - Richard Francis. 'Keevil puts us right in the centre of the action like no book has ever done before. I honestly felt like the actions and questionable decisions of the characters were placed on my shoulders and I would have to face the consequences... a fast-paced high-speed chase, the tension building with each page, compelling you to read on. With masterful storytelling and beautifully complex characters and dynamics, it really goes to show, sometimes you must experience death to truly understand life.' - Literary Lucie. 'A phenomenal thriller... Every sentence was meticulously crafted and it left me in awe of the author and his ingenious storytelling... an extremely menacing and electrifying narrative... He perfectly builds the tension which leaves one feeling unsettled. I couldn't put it down. It was lingering in my mind for days.' - The Biblio Sara. 'Tightly structured prose, tension and a vaguely threatening feel which seems to lurk in the background set Keevil's novel in motion and make it very difficult to turn away, even during its most uncomfortable moments. What really stands out... is Keevil's distinctive writing style and his ability to lead readers to question the choices they would make if they found themselves confronted with a situation such as the one Eira unwittingly finds herself in. This is a snappy and pacey read which makes for an excellent page-turner and a poignant reminder of the frailty of human life.' - Wales Art Review. 'There's a transcendent quality to novels which wrest tenderness and beauty from brutality and ugliness, and this one has it in abundance. Your Still Beating Heart has the emotional heft of a character-driven literary novel despite being a palpitation-inducing page-turner, a rare combination. I found it moving, gripping and evocative of place - if you enjoyed Judith Heneghan's Snegurochka (set in Kiev) or Garth Greenwell's What Belongs To You (set in Sofia), there are shades of overlap, but this book's heartbeats to its own tune.' - Isabelle Costello, The Literary Sofa. 'This really grabbed me right from the start. I just couldn't put it down. It's unashamedly a pacy thriller. It's hard-hitting with a really strong political undercurrent... in places, I wanted to look away but I couldn't. It's very, very strong.' - The Review Show, BBC Radio Wales. 'A great, gripping story, ferociously well-written, with characters that live and breathe.' - Stef Penney. 'Keevil's writing is unmissable... quite simply a brilliant writer.' - Viv Groskop. 'I was blown away. Beautiful writing... stunning.' - Mariam Toews.

Author Bio

Tyler Keevil grew up in Vancouver and in his mid-twenties moved to Wales. He has published several books and his short fiction has appeared in a wide range of magazines and anthologies, including The Missouri Review, New Welsh Review, and PRISM: International. He has received a number of awards for his writing, most notably The Missouri Review Jeffrey E. Smith Editors Prize, the Writers' Trust of Canada / McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize, and the Wales Book of the Year People's Prize. He is the Programme Director for the MA in Creative Writing at Cardiff University, and also teaches various extracurricular creative writing workshops and courses. Keevil's debut novel Fireball was published in 2010 and was longlisted for Wales Book of the Year, shortlisted for the Guardian Not the Booker prize, and received the Media Wales People's Prize 2011. His second novel The Drive was published to acclaim by Myriad in 2013. It was also longlisted for the Guardian Not the Booker prize and won the 2014 Wales Book of the Year People's Choice Award. 2014 also saw the publication of Keevil's short story collection, Burrard Inlet (Parthian), a story from which, 'Sealskin', was awarded Canada's Journey Prize for the best short story of 2014 by the Writers' Trust of Canada.