Swan river - David Reynolds

'A beautiful meditation on the nature of families, on the way that feelings are passed on almost imperceptibly from generation to generation' Independent'Swan River is a lovingly crafted story about love, truth and searching, and David Reynolds is a writer of calm, quite brilliance' Daily Express

Sis - as David Reynolds' grandmother was always called - was a passionate and headstrong young woman. Having betrayed herself by falling in love too trustingly, she added to her own unhappiness by marrying a man she did not love at all. Throughout his childhood and youth David Reynolds kept an eye on the past, entranced by these family stories from Victorian London - the music halls, the romances, the strange disappearance of his grandfather - even as he himself came of age in the vibrant 1960s. In Swan River he describes both worlds with great vitality and sympathy, and shows how a child's puzzled interest in his forebears deepens into an adult's understanding of human nature.

'For me, David Reynold's memoir Swan River stood head and shoulders above every other book this year. It's nothing like the usual slab of autobiography... The material is crafted and shaped with the artistry that we would expect from our best fiction writers' Jonathan Coe, Independent Books of the Year