Never Anyone But You Book

RELEASE DATE - 3 JANUARY 2019

'A novel of tremendous beauty . . . A wonderful achievement' Sarah Waters

'A beautiful and extraordinary book' Philip Pullman

When Suzanne, a shy 17-year-old, meets the brilliant but troubled Lucie in rural Provence at the turn of the twentieth century, the two young women embark on a clandestine love affair. But they soon long for greater freedom.

The lovers move to Paris where they recreate themselves entirely, as Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. Before long, they are mixing in the most glamorous social circles and producing art of great power and strangeness.

But the world is rapidly darkening around them. With war looming they leave Paris for Jersey, and it is here that they confront their destiny, dreaming up a campaign of propaganda against Hitler's occupying forces that will put their love - and even their very existence - in jeopardy.

From one of our most celebrated writers, Never Anyone but You explores the gripping true story of two extraordinary women who smashed gender boundaries and ultimately risked their lives to overcome oppression. Theirs is a story that has been hidden in the margins of history - until now...

"Arrestingly accomplished . . . Writing with an eerie command of precise detail, [Thomson] slips beneath the skin of characters who experience a crisis and learn, painfully, how to come to terms with catastrophe . . . [a] taut and absorbing novel . . . As with all of Thomson's elegant and troubling novels, Never Anyone But You exerts a menacing - but never histrionic - power."
the Observer

"Thomson has created a taut, magnificently controlled novel about creativity and personal survival that is a lucid reflection of the period it describes, as the surface of a surrealist picture is lucid . . . Like Cahun's photomontages, it looks like life, but it's not life, exactly. Only art can achieve this degree of realism."
The Guardian