Zoë Strachan

*** Shortlisted for the Green Carnation Prize 2011 ***

*** Longlisted for the London Book Award 2012 ***

Ever Fallen in Love was published in July by Sandstone Press. You can check it out on Amazon or order from Word Power. It is also available as an e-book.

Reviews:

‘Strachan’s maturity and insight shows through the beautifully constructed pages. The tempo stays effortlessly high and the tension keeps building along with Richard’s desire. . . . Ever Fallen In Love might be the one to catapult her into the mainstream’
Gutter

‘There is no doubt this is a hard-boiled book and it pulls no punches. Strachan writes in great detail about the psychology of her protagonists with objectivity and perception. The incredible trick she pulls off is that we do end up identifying with her introverted hero Richard, mainly because his journey is so complex and constantly blighted by his hopeless sexual obsession with the straight, taunting, malignant Luke’
Alice Thompson, Scottish Review of Books

‘The novel excels at evoking the mind games, the vile but subtly plotted erosion which one driven friend can exert on another. The first-person segments power the narrative, dragging the reader into the layers of tangled dependence as Richard falls foul of Luke’s excesses . . . astute, intelligent, almost entirely convincing’
Tom Adair, Scotsman

‘a dark tale of love, tragedy and betrayal. Written in Strachan’s typically lucid, honest style, it tells of lovers Richard and Luke and their wild student adventures, which come back to haunt Richard in his Highland village retreat ten years later. Strachan’s real strength is her psychological insight into her character’
Doug Johnstone, Big Issue

‘Ever Fallen in Love doesn’t disappoint. A quietly unsettling take on the coming-of-age genre, Strachan’s novel avoids the more obvious shock-factor conclusion and instead continually teeters on the edge. Unafraid of the unspoken and the unresolved, the story gets under your skin and lingers there uncomfortably’
Lucy Scholes, Sunday Times

‘Strachan sustains strong undercurrents of menace and regret by cutting back and forth: we see Richard then and now, a reclusive designer of computer games holed up in the Highlands, unable to fully shake the stain of bad decisions while still in thrall to a prior, supposedly more exciting version of himself. The fug of student common rooms and bars is expertly conveyed, alongside the clean-washed emptiness of the coast. And although I’ve never been interested in playing war games, Strachan makes their creation sound fascinating.’
Chris Ross, Guardian

‘Moving between the two time frames Strachan weaves an air of tense mystery that keeps the pages turning. She also deftly tells a story that will be familiar to many – showing how life can frequently take us places we never thought we’d be the kind of person to go, but how little we really change even so.’
Gregor White, Stirling Observer

‘Compelling reading . . . The story is deftly woven and the chapters about young Richard capture in their tone and pace the sense of frenzy and blind madness of teenage love. There is a cooler tone in the older Richard’s narrative, reflecting the maturing adult’s hindsight . . . Zoë Strachan has produced a powerful exploration of how youthful passion makes for vulnerability to bad influences, and the way even the strongest moral compass can swing wildly when faced with the pressure and agony of unrequited desire.’
Mandy Haggith, Northwords Now

The blurb reads:

Richard fell for Luke at university. Luke was handsome, dissolute, dangerous; together they did things that Richard has spent the last decade trying to forget.

In this compelling, visceral tale of how not to fit in, Zoë Strachan takes us on a journey through hedonistic student days to the lives we didn’t expect to end up living, and the hopes and fears that never quite leave us.

I think of it as a novel about unrequited love, about memory, about how we tell and retell our own stories to try and make sense of our lives – and to try and pinpoint the moment at which we made the decision that changed our paths forever.

The central character, Richard, lives in relative seculsion in a converted croft house in the far north of Scotland. The unexpected arrival of his younger sister Stephie forces him to confront unresolved issues surrounding a obsessive love affair in his past. This relationship ended in tragedy, opening up questions of responsibility, manipulation and betrayal. The novel explores the difference between the person Richard was at eighteen and who he is now, whether he was actively corrupted by the person he fell in love with or whether the relationship simply awakened intrinsic parts of his character, the existence of which he would rather not acknowledge.

The idea for Ever Fallen in Love came to me a few years ago, when I was on a Fellowship at the Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers, to whom I am very grateful. I’m also enormously indebted to the Scottish Arts Council, who awarded me a writer’s bursary that allowed me to take time off teaching to write this book.