wo timelines, two poets. One is Wytsan Hugh Auden, about to embark on a career as a schoolmaster at boys school Larchfield, Helensburgh, a small coastal town on the west coast of Scotland.
The other is Dora, recently married and expecting her first child moves to Helensburgh to start on her new life.
Both are full of optimism and, a hope that the new starts will provide the happiness and fulfillment. they are looking for.
But life is never that straight forward as Dora and Wystan are about to discover.
When Dora gives birth to daughter Beatrice at 6 months life begins to unravel. It is not that Dora struggles with mother hood which she does with aplomb but life that happens around her. She becomes paranoid that Mo and Terrance the couple who reside in the upstairs flat are trying to drive them out and to some extent this is true. As Dora grapples with her loss of identity and her growing isolation midwives and social workers begin to question her abilities to care for her daughter and she is plunged further and further in to the depths of despair.
For Wystan Auden, his appointment as a schoolmaster is a stop gap, a chance to replenish his dwindling finances but it also becomes a time in which he reflects on his life so far and what may await him in the future. A self confessed homosexual, Wystan suffers the loneliness of not being able to share his sexuality for fear of arrest and social recriminations. His summer escapes to Berlin to spend time with Christopher Isherwood allow him to live more freely and be exactly whom he wants to be. His downfall is his relationship with a young local lad which arouses suspicion amongst the locals.
As Dora and Wystan each plunge deeper into despair and loneliness their stories slowly begin to converge.before resolutions both good and bad are reached.
What I loved about this novel is the authors weaving together of fact and fiction when retelling Auden's story. Clarke's ability to lay bare his inner turmoil is expertly done and you genuinely feel great empathy with his situation.
As for Dora's deep descent into despair, I wanted to yell at her neighbours, shake her husband and make them understand her , her loneliness and her loss of identity.
What Polly Clark has achieved is a novel that is hugely emotive with lyrical prose that cannot help but draw the reader in.
As I closed the final page I was sad to leave Dora and Wystan behind.

What spectacular and poetic debut novel this is. Advance copies on Netgalley can be hit or miss and I turned out to be very lucky with this one. The two story lines are intertwined in such a way they become an organic whole. The young poet W.H. Auden, struggling as a teacher at Larchfield school, comes to life in the mind of the present day protagonist Dora, a poet who has lost herself after the premature birth of her daughter and her move to Scotland. Both share their isolation and obsession with poetry. As each of them struggle with their own demons, their stories converge, though it is up to the reader to interpret what is real. A skilfully crafted storyline, exquisite language, what more can one wish for!

Striking and unusual, Polly Clark's debut novel delves deep into one of the most isolating emotions we can feel: that of being a stranger. Two interwoven storylines unfold in the Scottish spa town of Helensburgh, eighty years apart, and spark unexpected connections between their two characters. One is Dora Fielding, a poet who has left her comfortable liberal world in London to move up north with her husband Kit. The other is also a poet: the young W.H. Auden, fresh from Oxford and trying to settle into a new career teaching at Larchfield boys' school in Helensburgh.

Clark is extremely good at evoking the slow, subtle creep of paranoia that comes with the feeling of being an outsider. Both her protagonists are highly sensitive people - that comes with the territory of being a poet - although they deal with their feelings of exclusion in different ways. Dora's sections in particular were hugely moving, as we see her grappling with the major issue that faces modern mothers: how to retain any sense of identity when the yardstick with which you've measured yourself (wit, career, intelligent conversation) is sacrificed to the needs of a creature that is entirely dependent on you? It's a ruthless, unflinching portrayal of impotence - of a need for reassurance and validation - and raises the question of how far we can trust Dora as a narrator.

I can't say more because I don't want to ruin it, but I do recommend this for those who like their fiction thoughtful and emotionally intense. Dora's tale is where the book really sings. As I read, I couldn't help wondering what readers in Helensburgh would think of this - would they be delighted to see their town given such a starring role, or would they bristle at its characterisation? - and then, with a smile, I saw that Clark lives there herself. So I think, in the end, we must see it as a love letter to the place, the way it mingles untamed landscapes and tightly-reined niceties, and the way it stimulates those who have the courage to pry through the cracks.

The full review will be published on 10 March 2017 at the link below:
https://theidlewoman.net/2017/03/10/larchfield-polly-clark/