Larchfield is a dark and sumptuous story of escape, desire, and words. The characters are engaging and realistic. Highly recommend.

A great book about a woman's struggle with isolation and sanity woven into the story of the poet W. H. Auden. It focuses on loneliness and survival in the wilds of scotland and was inspired by the author’s own plight when she moved to Scotland and found a connection with Auden that was to change her forever.

The drawn-out style of writing is not the style of writing I like to read. Therefore, I’m not the right reviewer for this book. There are others who would appreciate this style of writing and I hope this book finds them!

I am currently purchasing books for our secondary school library for our senior students. I am trying to provide a balance of genres and periods and really try and introduce them to a wide range of modern fiction and non-fiction. This book would definitely go down well with a hypercritical teenage audience as it has a bit of everything - great insights and a narrative style that draws you in and keeps you reading whilst also making you think about a wide range of issues at the same time. I think that school libraries are definitely changing and that the book we purchase should provide for all tastes and reflect the types of books that the students and staff go on to enjoy after leaving school. Larchfield is the kind of book that you can curl up with and totally immerse yourself in and I think it will definitely go down well at my school. I think that it was the perfect blend of A page-turning read with a strong narrative voice too! I think it would be a big hit with our seniors and will definitely recommend that we buy a copy as soon as we can.

There was an oppressiveness and dark under current to this novel that made it hard the shake. The use of parallel protagonists is well done, but she does lay it on thick with the symbolism and her background as a poet also means that sometimes thing get over flowery on the language side. Overall, it was oddly unsatisfying despite having large chunks wish i enjoyed and was engrossed by.

This was a beautifully written historical fiction book exploring the devastating impact of prejudice and hate. Whilst I didn't fully connect with it for some reason, I'd still recommend it to others for the lyrical prose and complex characters.

Larchfield is a chapter in the life of newly married young poet and soon to be mum Dora Fielding who moves from London to Helensburgh (a former haunt for wealthy shipbuilders in the 19 century) to be with her husband Kit. Undaunted by the prospect of a new life in a small town Dora hopes to blend family and creativity. Rather it initially excites her especially as she learns that another poet namely W H Auden resided there at the Larchfield School for boys. Clark ingenuously employs this literary historical premise and a modern lass's dilemma as she struggles with motherhood, the realities of small town life which tend to amplify isolation and bias, and eventually sanity itself. Dora finds solace and comfort from an unexpected quarter. For Auden too suffered discrimination albeit for very different reasons. Told in dual alternating POV the story moves between the 1930's (Auden's time) to the 2000 (Dora's time). Clark draws one into the plot alluring us with her lyrical panache and verbal acuity. In her characteristic frankness, Auden's uncertainties and the quiet desperation of Dora's life unfold as Clark exquisitely captures every nuance of their vulnerability. An in depth review of the novel would be a spoiler yet anything less does not do it justice. Suffice it to say that one has to read Larchfield to truly appreciate Clarks work. Only Clark's bravura could seduce her readers with such a tense and fraught tale. Her eye for meticulous detail is evidenced throughout the novel even in the brilliant imagery. Far from being irksome or detracting from the tale it only serves to enhance it proving to be a delightful read. Larchfield turns out to be so much more than merely a compelling fictional work. It is that rare moment when the vicissitudes of life are elevated to the sublime and a debut novel transcends the ordinary. It does have an HEA perhaps not what the reader expects but then again none of Clark's works(poetry) are - the unpredictable is very much Clarks stylemark

Loved this - a really affecting novel about connection and loneliness. Interesting to learn about Auden and the quality of the prose was fittingly poetic.

This is an unusual book, and one which is both emotionally and intellectually satisfying. The account of Auden's time as a schoolteacher in the dreadfully buttoned-up environment of inter-war Helensburgh, and that of Dora, increasingly desperate and lonely after the birth of her baby, are powerfully told and convincing. For much of the novel, while Dora snatches glimpses of Auden's world through the lens of her own unhappiness and thwarted creativity, I found myself utterly caught up in the blurring and exploration of time and place. What I found slightly less convincing was the ultimate collision of Auden's and Dora's worlds; at the point where the two become one, it felt as if the structure of the book had slightly suffocated its beating heart. However, it's definitely one of the most enjoyable novels Ive read recently, and I've had very good conversations with friends who have also really enjoyed it.

A beautifully written and compelling read which I enjoyed for the most part. Dora and Wystan are brought to life through alternating chapters. I'm not sure how much of the account of Wystan's time at Larchfield is true other than he was there teaching for 21/2 years but the torment he must have gone through as a young man seems very real. Dora's story is a little less convincing to me, I struggled to decide when the story was supposed to be set as the language and some events seemed to be at odds with present day. As Dora gradually loses her grasp on reality and retreats into an imaginary world with Auden, I thought the plot was taking an interesting turn into post natal depression but I ended up just being confused. I'm not sure how the Dora/Auden chapters should be read, is it all in her head or is he somehow experiencing their connection too? How does she know so much about Larchfield and him?
It's an intriguing book but I think it leaves a few loose threads that are difficult to resolve and I wish that she had either gone further with a time slip notion or more into the PND angle.
It has made me think though and it is a very good debut novel that I would recommend.
My thanks to Netgalley for this copy.

When it comes to beautiful writing Polly Clark is immensely talented. Her prose is wonderfully and fittingly poetic if occasionally to mannered to be natural, and Larchfield and Helensburgh evocatively described. Auden is as melancholy and thoughtful as one would imagine, with bouts of self-doubt and flashes of brilliance and verve. He is young and struggling to find his way in his work and the world, forced into a remote teaching position in a crumbling, underfunded public school even as his first volume of poetry is published. Auden is lonely and adrift, even driven to send out a lonely message but he also befriends first the invalid wife of his headmaster and then Gregory, a young man glimpsed at the railway station who has since haunted Auden's thoughts. The contrast between his quiet, isolated life in Larchfield is contrasted with the colour and freedom of his periodic trips to the more "debauched" Berlin to visit Christopher Isherwood. Auden's relationships in Scotland and Germany are written with great colour and contrast, revealing several sides to a complex man. This part of the novel, I loved.

I was far less invested and, to be honest, interested in the parallel story of Dora, a contemporary poet recently moved to Helenburgh. She is married to an older man and pregnant with their first child and is struggling to come to terms with the sudden shift in her life from Cambridge to Helensburgh, work to family. As she tries to adjust to her baby and the neighbours their shared house she is inspired by the news that WH Auden spent a short period in the area, and even wrote his famous Orators there. There was plenty of potential in this thread, two poets separated by years and both oppressed by isolation and the fear of thwarted ambition. But when Dora miraculously finds the bottle cast away by Auden decades ago the connection between the two characters that this discovery forged wasn't what I was expecting. Alongside Dora's developing "neighbours from Hell" situation at home this whole story-line became far too outlandish and dramatic for me. The denouement between Dora's family and their neighbour was really quite silly.

It seemed to me that Clark's failure to to define the nature of the meetings between Auden and Dora is the point on which the novel breaks down. Is this a delusion on Dora's part? Is she really suffering a bout of post-partum illness? For me this approach would have created a far stronger narrative as well as an exploration of a largely taboo subject that affects many women. At the close of the novel it seems like this has been the case as Dora is hospitalised but if so how does Dora come into possession of details about Auden's Larchfield life she has no way of discovering except if their meetings are "real" in some sense the issue remains annoyingly indistinct and under-explored.

Polly Clark has a marvellous way with words but the structure and plot of Larchfield ultimately let it down.

It is 1930 and the young poet W.H. Auden takes a train to Helensburgh, a genteel resort in west Scotland, to become a teacher in small struggling private prep school, Larchfield. In a parallel narrative, Dora Fielding, new married to the architect Kit, and close to the birth of her first child, moves into a large property in Helensburgh. She had been Oxford academic, and a minor published poet, and is intrigued to learn that Auden taught at Larchfield school. Both Auden and Dora have trouble in settling into their environment. For W.H, Auden it is the incongruity of being a schoolmaster and unsuited to the profession, as well as the pressure so having to repress his homosexuality and find acceptance amongst his Scottish peers and pupils. Along with his frustrations, there is a nasty case of child sexual abuse. For Dora, struggling alone in the house with Beatrice, their new baby, she has to deal with religious hypocrisy and intolerance from neighbours and others in the town – subjects which are often conveniently skated over in relation to Scottish religious pressures and nationalism.
An unlikely coincidence brings both Auden and Dora together over the intervening years, though it is clear that Dora’s increasingly severe post-natal psychological struggles account for this seemingly absurd situation.
This is a beautifully told story. Both W.H. Auden and Dora Fielding are captured with elegance and aplomb, and their dilemmas and struggles are movingly portrayed as they try to find a way of living within the constraints and pressures of society. It is simply a delight to read.

I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.
When pregnant poet Dora moves to Helensburgh in Scotland with her husband,
giving up a life in academia for supposed domestic bliss, she little expects the isolation she feels and the hostility from her nightmare neighbours, nor the terrifying submersion into motherhood and associated loss of identity. Several decades earlier, Wystan Auden - the famous poet - is early in his career and forced to take a teaching job at a boys’ boarding school in Helensburgh. A fish out of water, his homosexuality is suspected in an age where this was illegal. Auden is miserable in his new life, desperately wanting to connect but keeping apart out of necessity to protect his secret life.

Tragic in its portrayal of two isolated, unhappy people, neither fitting into the tight-knit community they find themselves deposited in, this is a well-written tale of the experience of loneliness and isolation, and how this can affect your mental health. Both characters are expected to fulfil certain roles (the perfect mother and the traditional heterosexual male) and both are destined to fail. Avoiding spoilers, there is a surreal twist to the novel which highlights the similar emotional states of Dora and Wystan. You are not quite sure what is real and what is hallucinatory or just paranoia. It is a slightly anxious experience reading this book but this is a testament to how far it draws you into the characters’ worlds. An accomplished first novel.

I really enjoyed this book - Polly Clark describes Helensburgh and its residents very accurately.
The story has a duel timeline plot set in present day Helensburgh where Dora has just moved to and in the same town in the 1930s where the poet WH Auden is teaching in a boys school.
Both characters struggle to fit into their respective social circles and the novel reveals how their lives converge - Dora as a new mother dealing with loneliness, feelings of inadequency and post natal depression and Auden as a gay man in 1930 Scotland when the very idea of homosexuality was illegal..
The language Polly Clark uses is magical and sweeps you along, slowly revealing the distrust and suspicions at the heart of the story.
For a first novel, this is masterly.

I really enjoyed 'Larchfield', an intelligent, imaginative quasi literary mystery.

Poet Dora Fielding is a woman out of place in a tightly knit community on the west coast of Scotland, with the neighbours from hell. Poet WH Auden is a man out of his time, as a gay teacher in a small-minded public school. The lives of these 2 outsiders intertwine, as Dora regards Wystan's life and poetry as a sane retreat from the trials of motherhood and the bullying behaviour of the local Helensburghians.

I don't normally enjoy time-slip novels, but was swept along by this one, and was really rooting for Dora by the end. It also made me want to revisit Auden's poetry.

This book tells of and follows in parallel the lives of two outsiders, both poets, who came to live and settle in Helensburgh on the West Coast of Scotland at different times. One is W H Auden, an acclaimed poet who lived there in the 1930's and worked as schoolmaster at Larchfield School. The other is Dora Fielding, a young contemporary poetess fresh from Oxford, who comes to Helensburgh with her husband to start a family.

As Dora slowly sinks into depression and gradually loses her sense of self, she becomes obsessed with researching the life of W H Auden, and this "mal de vivre" is somehow mirrored in Wystan's austere and misfit life at Larchfield School.
Both characters are indeed outsiders who struggle to fit in their new surroundings.

There is a seeping melancholy in this books which rings true and which will haunt you long after you have read it. I found it very beautiful and truly absorbing.

3.5*
Copy provided by NetGalley in return for a fair review

I was so happy when I was approved by NetGalley to review this book. The summary described it as "Echoing the depths of Possession, the elegance of The Stranger's Child ..." and since Possession is one of my favourite books of all time I was very curious. Of course I know that they always overdo it a bit on the praise and I didn't actually expect it to come near the 'depths of Possession', that would just be unfair.

Overall definitely an enjoyable read. I read Auden in Uni and I loved to spend some time with him in this book. The chapters on Auden are gentle while conveying the real struggles with his being, as the locals so elegantly express it, a 'pervert'.

Next to the gentle Auden chapters there is the much darker life of Dora. Poet Dora is whisked off by her husband to remote Scotland, where she meets loneliness, the premature birth of her daughter, neighbours from hell and mental illness. Those neighbours, Mo and Terrence, were absolute horror although described by everyone as 'good, church-going people'. As an outsider in this community where 'good' and 'church-going' are considered absolute synonyms, Dora has no means to fight them.

There's one thing that really jarred for me in this novel. It can be either of the next two things, I cannot put my finger on it.
-The descriptions of Dora's mental illness/hallucinations/psychosis don't seem realistic to me. Luckily I don't have personal experience, but it all seems a bit too smooth and idyllic. Maybe it would have helped to get a bit more of husband Kit's point of view.
-I got the impression that Dora's illness was used a a device to bring Dora and Wystan together.

I will definitely recommend it, I enjoyed the mix of author biography, historical novel, mild horror (if you're a bit sensitive to these things, Mo will give you nightmares), the outsider, finding your place.

I absolutely loved the first part of this book and adored the parts that were back in the 1930s with Auden. I thought they so captured the time and Auden's character and were entirely engrossing. I wasn't so sure about the modern passages. They didn't ring quite true and every time there was a reference to something unmistakably 21st Century it jarred. I wasn't quite sure about the blurring of lines between Auden's time and Dora's, I felt it muddled things to begin with although I grew to accept the transitions as the story continued. Altogether its a beautifully written book, wonderful character portraits, strong sense of place. Really enjoyed it.

Fabulous and original way of weaving facts with fiction. This portrait of Auden makes his poetry come alive when you realise the struggles he went through just to live his life.

Thanks Quercus Books and netgalley for this ARC.

Starts out slow but will be worth it in the end. Rewarding to though who are patient with the past and present.