Cirrus@Austlit

'Antonia Hayes’ adventures in language began when, as a young child, she was a word sponge, soaking up speech and phrases and the sometimes haunted spaces in between. She became a natural bookworm, turning to the Baby-sitters Club series – those classics of the 90s – to start a lifetime of finding friends and comfort in the pages of a book. When her debut novel, Relativity, was published, she again turned to literature for guidance and consolation, this time in the form of Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. 

'Woolf wished for financial independence and a room of one’s own in which to write, but Hayes, writing almost ninety years later, argues here that maybe that isn’t enough. Perhaps women writers need a whole universe of their own. Buoyed by hope and a lifetime of language, Hayes tells us how we can dare to disturb the universe before A Room of One’s Own turns 100. ' (Publication summary)

'Ethan is a bright young boy obsessed with physics and astronomy who lives with his mother, Claire. Claire has been a wonderful parent to Ethan, but he's becoming increasingly curious about his father's absence in his life, wanting to fill in the gaps.

'Claire's life is centred on Ethan; she is fiercely protective of her talented, vulnerable son, and of her own feelings. When Ethan falls ill, tied to a tragic event from when he was a baby, Claire's tightly held world is split open.

'On the other side of the country, Mark is trying to forget about the events that tore his family apart. Then a sudden and unexpected call home forces him to confront his past, and the hole in his life that was once filled with his wife Claire and his son Ethan.

'When Ethan secretly intercepts a letter from Mark to Claire, he unleashes long-suppressed forces that – like gravity – pull the three together again, testing the limits of love and forgiveness.

'Heart-wrenching, absorbing and magical, Relativity is an irresistible novel about science, love, unbreakable bonds and irreversible acts.' (Publication summary)