The Road from Belhaven: A Novel

by Margot Livesey

Overview

From the New York Times best-selling author of The Flight of Gemma Hardy, an unforgettable novel about a young woman whose gift of second sight complicates her coming of age in nineteenth-century Scotland

“Bewitching and seductive.” —Rebecca Makkai, author of I Have Some Questions for You • “Magical.” —Allegra Goodman, author of Sam • “This book is a cold, clear, perfect lake." —Lauren Groff, author of The Vaster Wilds


Growing up in the care of her grandparents on Belhaven Farm, Lizzie Craig discovers as a small child that she can see into the future. But her gift is selective—she doesn’t, for instance, see that she has an older sister who will come to join the family. As her “pictures” foretell various incidents and accidents, she begins to realize a painful truth: she may glimpse the future, but she can seldom change it.

Nor can Lizzie change the feelings that come when a young man named Louis, visiting Belhaven for the harvest, begins to court her. Why have the adults around her not revealed that the touch of a hand can change everything? After following Louis to Glasgow, though, she learns the limits of his devotion. Faced with a seemingly impossible choice, she makes a terrible mistake. But her second sight may allow her a second chance.

Luminous and transporting, The Road from Belhaven “is a marvel… a story as thrilling as it is thoughtful, one animated by life’s fundamental question: How do we change?” (Anthony Marra, author of Mercury Pictures Presents)

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593471241
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/04/2025
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.19(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.75(d)

About the Author

MARGOT LIVESEY was born and grew up on the edge of the Scottish Highlands. She is the author of a collection of stories and nine other novels, including Eva Moves the Furniture, The Flight of Gemma Hardy, and The Boy in the Field. She has received awards from the NEA, the Guggenheim Foundation and the Radcliffe Institute. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is on the faculty of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Hometown:

Boston, Massachusetts

Date of Birth:

July 24, 1953

Place of Birth:

Perth, Scotland

Education:

B.A. in English and philosophy from the University of York, England

Editorial Reviews

“Piercing and eloquent. . . . The prose is radiant. . . . A gem of a novel.” —The Washington Post

“Powerful and engaging. . . . Margot Livesey is no slouch when it comes to casting a mesmerizing spell with her language; one of her other indelible and pleasure-inducing trademarks is lacing her fiction with shimmers of otherworldliness. . . . Lizzie is a marvel of a character.” —Boston Globe

“Margot Livesey is an incandescent writer, generous and graceful, always imbuing her characters with astonishing humanity and grace. I love all  Livesey’s books, but The Road From Belhaven has become my new favorite; I felt so deeply for Lizzie that I worried about her fate with the same love and indignation and hope I would have for a flesh-and-blood friend of my youth. This book is a cold, clear, perfect lake.”—Lauren Groff, New York Times best-selling author of The Vaster Wilds

“Gracefully evokes the magic and mystery of the rural world and the vitality and harshness of city life.” —The New Yorker

“A master class in storytelling…. If there’s any complaint to be made about The Road from Belhaven, it’s that we don’t get to linger there longer.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“If you haven't dived into the novels of Margot Livesey, her new The Road from Belhaven is an excellent place to start. . . . Her books vividly convey the joys and sorrows of ordinary, usually rural, life but they also leave room for the extraordinary. . . . Livesey has keen insight into the way people behave and she crafts lyrical, lucid sentences, but what's best about her work is her understanding that magic and mystery are part of everyday life.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune

“This novel casts a spell. Rich with tangible detail, The Road from Belhaven is magical as well, not least in the way it stops time for the reader.  I inhaled it in one day.”—Allegra Goodman, New York Times best-selling author of Sam

“Margot Livesey is a treasure: a writer who understands the magic and mysteries of the human soul, and brings that wisdom to novels that are both riveting and lush. The Road from Belhaven is a smart, profound, and beautiful book that draws you in and holds you tight.”—Chris Bohjalian, New York Times best-selling author of The Flight Attendant and Hour of the Witch

“The Road from Belhaven is a marvel. In this radiantly beautiful novel, Margot Livesey introduces us to Lizzie Craig, an unforgettable 19th-century Scottish clairvoyant haunted by her future as much as her past. Livesey has crafted a story as thrilling as it is thoughtful, one animated by life’s fundamental question: how do we change?”—Anthony Marra, New York Times best-selling author of Mercury Pictures Presents

“Margot Livesey is a great, gifted storyteller, with a moral compass of pure gold and the necessary clear eyes to understand and love us all, with our mistakes and misunderstandings and damages. She holds the world of Belhaven Farm up to her bright, sharp vision and the light and the shadows dance for generations.”—Amy Bloom, New York Times best-selling author of In Love

“Margot Livesey’s prose is so lucid, so precise, and so understated as she goes about conjuring and sustaining the lives of her characters, that the reader hardly notices how deep a claim Lizzie Craig has laid on the heart until it is in danger of breaking on her behalf. The only thing I could think to do when I finished the book was to begin again, I didn’t want it to end.”—Paul Harding, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Tinkers

“Margot Livesey shines bright, as always – giving us both the beauty of the world and the roiling tumult of the souls within it. Bewitching and seductive, The Road from Belhaven is a vision.” —Rebecca Makkai, New York Times best-selling author of I Have Some Questions for You and The Great Believers

“A lyrical and tender coming-of-age tale.” —Town and Country

“Powerful…. With the sociological complexity of an Edith Wharton novel, Livesey portrays Lizzie butting up against gendered restrictions on her freedom …. Livesey’s lyrical perfection comes at no expense to the plot, which barrels like a runaway train. This is a gem.” —Publishers Weekly, starred review

"Livesey’s vibrant imagery and profound compassion deliver a tragic coming-of-age novel that resonates with her gifted protagonist's resourcefulness." —Booklist, starred review

“[An] unconventional coming-of-age tale with engaging characters embedded in an absorbing story.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Compassionately drawn and emotionally charged, Margot Livesey's novel maps the tenderest places of the human heart and soul and once again displays her indelible grasp on the human condition.” —Shelf Awareness

From the Publisher

★ 10/16/2023

In the powerful latest from Livesey (The Boy in the Field), an orphan raised on her grandparents’ Belhaven farm in 19th-century Scotland struggles with her secret gift of second sight. Lizzie Craig sees images of calamities before they occur (a person felled by a swarm of bees, an animal dying). To her dismay, her warnings go unheeded. When she’s 16, a young tailor’s apprentice named Louis Hunter visits Belhaven from Glasgow. Lizzy falls in love with Louis and soon joins him in Glasgow, where she takes a position as a housemaid. Though she’s devoted to him, he’s reluctant to marry, even after Lizzy gets pregnant. With the sociological complexity of an Edith Wharton novel, Livesey portrays Lizzy butting up against gendered restrictions on her freedom, such as her inability to inherit Belhaven from her grandparents. After several devastating blows, Lizzy finally manages to find her path by using her gift. Sure-handed depictions of nature abound (“winter came like a fist”), as do textured glimpses of Lizzie’s inner life (“She felt a sudden longing for this person she did not remember who could make thrushes sing and had boldly run away to Gretna Green”). The vitality of Glaswegian life is captured with scenes at the Tam O’ Shanter Tavern, where Louis occasionally sings and Lizzy takes part in dances and dramas. Throughout, Livesey’s lyrical perfection comes at no expense to the plot, which barrels like a runaway train. This is a gem. Agent: Amanda Urban, CAA. (Feb.)This review has been updated for clarity.

Publishers Weekly

The most appealing feature of this audiobook by Margo Livesey is Ell Potter's spirited rendering of the characters' Scottish accents. Potter captures the atmosphere of late-nineteenth-century Scottish country life and her young heroine's uncertain grasp of her gift of precognition. Livesey, best known for her previous novel THE BOY IN THE FIELD, stands at the opposite pole from a thriller author. Here she offers no powerful themes, urgent conflicts, or memorable resolution. This story is ultimately fulfilling but requires patience and the benefit of a gifted and resourceful narrator who can hold the ear even when the story lacks direction. D.A.W. © AudioFile 2024, Portland, Maine

MARCH 2024 - AudioFile

2023-10-07
A Scottish farm girl finds love and heads for the big city.

Lizzie Craig has learned not to speak of the “pictures” that sometimes give her glimpses of the future. Her grandparents have enough to deal with struggling to make ends meet at Belhaven Farm in eastern Scotland, and they are the only family she knows; her parents were both dead by the time she was a year old, in 1874. When her sister becomes engaged to a young man willing to work on the farm, Lizzie feels free to think about moving to Glasgow; her oldest friend, Hugh, who left Belhaven to work in a sewing machine factory, has been urging her to change her life for years, but the real reason is Hugh’s friend Louis Hunter, a tailor’s apprentice she falls in love with. Livesey writes evocatively about Lizzie’s mingled panic and excitement upon encountering Glasgow’s urban possibilities, and tenderly about her first experiences of sexual desire. It’s a nice touch, belying stereotypes about late-Victorian society, that no one other than her grandfather is especially shocked when Lizzie becomes pregnant. But Louis has years left in his apprenticeship and feels they can’t yet marry; the novel’s second half follows Lizzie as she struggles to care for infant Barbara back home on the farm while holding Louis’ possibly wandering affections in Glasgow. There’s nothing really new in this tale of a young woman slowly coming to terms with the conflicts between her responsibilities to those around her and to herself, but Livesey’s admirers will recognize the gentle compassion with which she limns all her characters, even those like Louis who don’t necessarily behave well. Lizzie’s second sight prompts a plot development that brings her odyssey to an interim conclusion, with some painful losses but also important satisfactions and new possibilities ahead.

A quietly unconventional coming-of-age tale with engaging characters embedded in an absorbing story.

Kirkus Reviews