How Much the Heart Can Hold
Seven Stories on Love

Name: How Much the Heart Can Hold
Brand: Hachette UK
Availability: InStock
Author: Carys Bray
ISBN: 9781473654846

Author: Carys Bray, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, Bernardine Evaristo, Grace McCleen, Donal Ryan, Nikesh Shukla, D.W. Wilson

Narrator: Grainne Gillis, Jane Collingwood, Jeff Harding, Jilly Bond, Luke Thompson, Raj Ghatak, Sarah Barron

Unabridged: 5 hr 22 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Sceptre

Published: 11/03/2016

Categories: Fiction, Anthologies, Literary Fiction

Synopsis

'No one has measured, not even poets, how much the heart can hold.'
Zelda Fitzgerald

Love is not a singular concept.

In this collection, seven award-winning authors explore seven concepts of love: from Philautia, self-love, to Agape, love for humanity; and from Storge, a natural affection for family, to Mania, a frenzied, obsessive love:

La Douleur Exquise (the pain of unrequited love)
Before It Disappears by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan (c) 2016

Pragma (enduring love)
One More Thing Coming Undone by D.W. Wilson (c) 2016

Philautia (love for oneself)
White Wine by Nikesh Shukla (c) 2016

Mania (obsessive love)
Magdala, Who Slips Sometimes by Donal Ryan (c) 2016

Storge (familial love)
Codas by Carys Bray (c) 2016

Eros (erotic love)
The Love Story by Grace McCleen (c) 2016

Agape (love for humanity)
The Human World by Bernardine Evaristo (c) 2016

Seven authors; seven short stories; seven flashes of love.

The publication of How Much the Heart Can Hold is heralded by a Sceptre short story competition. The winning story, based on a concept of love, will be published in the paperback edition.

(P) 2016 Hodder & Stoughton

About Rowan Hisayo Buchanan

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan is the author of Harmless Like You, Starling Days and The Sleep Watcher. She has won the Authors' Club First Novel Award and a Betty Trask Award and been shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award. Her work has been a New York Times Editors' Choice and an NPR Great Read. Rowan was the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell, Hedgebrook, the Asian American Writers' Workshop, Gladstone's Library and Kundiman. Her writing has appeared in Granta, The Paris Review and The Atlantic among other places.

About Grace McCleen

Grace McCleen's first novel, The Land of Decoration, was published in 2012 and was awarded the Desmond Elliott Prize for the best first novel of the year. It was also chosen for Richard & Judy's Book Club and won her the Betty Trask Prize in 2013. Her second novel, The Professor of Poetry, was published by Sceptre in 2013 and was shortlisted for the Encore Award. She read English at the University of Oxford and has an MA from York, and currently lives in London.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Ell

A unique and wonderful collection of short stories that redefine the definitions of love. My particular favourites were: Before It Disappears, Magdala, Who Slips Sometimes, The Love Story and The Human World, yet there are moments of beauty and exceptional writing in every piece.......more

Goodreads review by Callum

Subtitled ‘seven stories on love’ (though there are actually eight in this paperback edition), this anthology sets out to quash the idea that love is a purely romantic notion. It does so by having each of its stories explore a different kind of love; such as unrequited love, obsessional love, famili......more

Quotes

All seven [stories] score an outright win in the battle to make the ethereal real. Country Life

Together they assert that love is more heart-breaking and transforming than the word necessarily conveys. Observer

Startlingly original stories Sunday Express S Magazine

With prose that is occasionally astonishing, these stories muddy the waters of the literature on love in the best possible way. Financial Times