'This presumably being the fact that he was in love with her. Or thought he was. Or said he was. Or said he thought he was...'
James and Katherine meet at a wedding in London. It is January 2006, towards the end of the money-for-nothing years, and James is a man with a varied past - entrepreneur, estate agent, film producer, horse-racing tipster, former dot com millionaire - now living alone in a flat in Bloomsbury. Separated from her husband, a successful paparazzo, Katherine is working at an interim job in a luxury hotel. Taken with each other, they exchange phone numbers at the wedding, but from then on not much goes according to the script.
Narrated from several different perspectives, Spring is a kaleidoscopic and complex portrait of a relationship, of contemporary England, and of the ebb and flow of money. Instantly recognisable and unbearably real, it is a love story unlike any you will have read.
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Spring confirms that [Szalay] is a writer with the whole range of talents... Often outstanding - Sunday Times
The lives of two disconsolately unfulfilled people start to blaze, thanks to Szalay's often brutal honesty...formidable ear for dialogue - which transforms the most mundane exchanges into comedy, a la Mike Leigh - and seductively sensuous descriptions - Metro
A texture of truthfulness quite unlike that of any other fiction abut London that I know...a very beautifully poised novel - Evening Standard
The forensic scrutiny of every aspect of a fledgling relationship, from both points of view, is one of the many delights of Spring... Devastatingly powerful...also extremely funny, in that understated, unexpected way that makes you burst into sudden noise in public places and alarm those around you. Szalay's dialogue is pithy and sharp; his peripheral characters lip-smackingly delicious - Independent on Sunday
A brave venture...psychologically realistic - Financial Times
A sharp, truthful, funny portrait of contemporary manners that is also unexpectedly moving - The Times
Highly unusual in its realism and astuteness about the way we live now...in its understated way, a very beautifully poised novel - Scotsman
It would be easy to say that David Szalay, the author of London and the South East and The Innocent, is a rising star and that Spring, his third novel, is a quiet triumph of understated realism, so let's say it straight away and get on with talking about how damned good the book is ... This is a brave and intelligent novel. Anyone can write lightly about sunshine or darkly about the night, but it takes a novelist of Szalay's skill and ambition to write with brilliance about twilight. His are emotional states that play out to novel length. This is one of those books that leaves you not only with admiration for the novelist, but also with a sense of wonder about the precision of the novel form itself - Guardian
Szalay is certainly a writer to look out for... The writer [he] most puts me in mind of is a young Julian Barnes - Thebookbag.co.uk
Szalay is immensely talented... [he] gets everything right: the atmosphere, the suspense, the inner lives of his characters. Absolutely superb - Evening Standard
David Szalay was born in Canada in 1974. His first novel, London and the South-East won the Betty Trask Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. His second novel, The Innocent, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2009. He lives in London.
