... is now available to pre-order from Amazon.co.uk. Treat the blurb there with a little caution - Ali is only three (not four) when the story begins, and the plot traces her development from talented child to young woman and professional musician by way of some distinctly thorny relations with those close to her - most notably, her complex and repressed mother, Kate, who perhaps loves her not wisely but too well...
A lot has gone into this book. I was never a child prodigy, but I've experienced that pressure to some degree, the Russian scales, the need to please, the weight of expectation, the conflicts over schooling, the magic of making music at intense and overwhelming summer courses, the longing for a mentor, the loneliness until you finally meet your soulmates... The book represents, simultaneously, none of my own experiences and all of them.
The hardback will be out from Hodder & Stoughton on 8 March and the paperback sometime in the summer. A Dutch edition is also to be published by De Kern in the Netherlands in due course and we're keeping fingers crossed for sales of rights to publishers in Germany, Denmark and the States, among others.....
