Emma Darwin (novelist)

Emma Darwin is an English novelist whose first book, "The Mathematics of Love", was published to critical acclaim in 2006. She is the great-great-granddaughter of Charles and Emma Darwin.

Biography

Darwin was born and brought up in London. Her father is Henry Galton Darwin, a lawyer in the Foreign Office, son of Sir Charles Galton Darwin, grandson of Sir George Darwin, and great-grandson of Charles Darwin. Her mother Jane (née Christie) is an English teacher, so they spent three years commuting between London and Brussels. She has two sisters; Carola and Sophia (Sophia Katherine). The family spent many holidays on the Essex/Suffolk border, where much of her novel "The Mathematics of Love" is set.

She read Drama at the University of Birmingham, and she spent some years in academic publishing. But when she had two small children she started writing again, and eventually earned an MPhil in Writing at the University of Glamorgan, where her tutor was novelist and poet Christopher Meredith. The novel she wrote for the degree became "The Mathematics of Love", which was sold to Headline Review, as the first of a two-book deal. Meanwhile, she had found the form of a research degree so fruitful that she is doing a PhD in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths' College, where her supervisor is Maura Dooley. Darwin now lives with her children in South East London, still surrounded by history: there was a Viking fort on the hill behind their house, and down the road is Eltham Palace. [adapted from [http://www.emmadarwin.com Author's Website] ]

"The Mathematics of Love" was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Best First Book Award for the Europe and South Asia region. [ [http://www.commonwealthfoundation.com/culturediversity/writersprize/2007prize/Shortlist/index.cfm Commonwealth Writers Award Shortlist] ]

Publications

* "The Mathematics of Love" London: Headline Review (3 Jul 2006) ISBN 0755330625 - paperback published in the UK March 8th 2007 ISBN 978-0755330645. Published in the US ISBN 978-0061140273

Reviews

* "works on every conceivable level. Plot, pace, language and tone combine to produce an uncommonly good read, a piece of quietly confident writing that is remarkable in a first novel...She builds layer on layer of emotion and history until, like a photographic print emerging from its chemical bath, the final picture is revealed… Everyone is, at the core, vulnerable, their happiness bittersweet and fleeting but nevertheless priceless. Darwin has somehow managed to express this basic human condition without succumbing to bleakness. A real achievement." The Times

* "Historical romance, Gothic tale and Bildungsroman...The narrative centres on the powerful nostalgia of a house in time, within a landscape that records the passage of generations...ambitious in concept and design. Its canvas is immense... the narrative of photography is electrifying. Darwin creates an imaginative language capable of suggesting the quality of the uncanny present in the humblest snapshot." The Independent

* "an absorbing historical novel of love and war... Linked themes between the narratives flower - painting versus photography, female liberation versus repression, the complexities of love." The Guardian

* "Emma Darwin is an assured writer, and manages the styles of both 1819 and 1976 quite handily. Fans of Anita Shreve's "Fortune's Rocks" and A.S. Byatt's superior "Possession" will probably gobble it down in one sitting." Yvonne Zipp Christian Science Monitor [Yvonne Zipp Christian Science MonitorFebruary 02, 2007 [http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0202/p12s04-bogn.html Page turners:'The Mathematics of Love'] ]

* "The bilingual dexterity of this novel is one of its several triumphs ...the two stories that Darwin tells here add up to something hauntingly beautiful." Ron Charles in the Washington Post [ [http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Love-Novel-P-S/dp/0061140279/ Washington Post review] quoted on Amazon.com]

References

ee also

* [http://www.emmadarwin.com Author's Website]
* Emma Darwin