The Light Years

‘Maybe my favourite books ever’ – Marian Keyes

Told with exceptional grace, The Light Years is a modern classic of twentieth-century English life and is the first novel in Elizabeth Jane Howard’s extraordinary, bestselling family saga, The Cazalet Chronicles.

‘They drove past fields of wheat with poppies . . . through woods of oak and Spanish chestnut . . . and hedges decorated by the last of the dog-roses bleached nearly white by the sun . . . ‘Oh, this country!’ he said . . . ‘To me, it is the best in England.’

1937. Every summer, the Cazalet brothers – Hugh, Edward and Rupert – return to the family home in the heart of the Sussex countryside with their wives and children. There, they join their parents and unmarried sister Rachel to enjoy two blissful months at Home Place. But despite the idyllic setting, nothing can be done to soothe the siblings’ heartache.

Hugh is haunted by the ravages of the Great War. Edward is torn between his familial duties and his relationships that lie outside of the home. Rupert is in turmoil over his inability to please his new wife. Meanwhile, Rachel risks losing her only chance at happiness because of her unflinching loyalty to the family.

As the world they had known begins to slip away, this is the story of one family facing up to immense change – in themselves, and in the world.

‘Elizabeth Jane Howard’s The Cazalet Chronicles is a series of five novels, but it’s so compulsive a saga that surely it counts as one work . . . vast in its scope, minute in its detail and utterly charming, it bears reading again and again’ – Gill Hornby, bestselling author of Miss Austen

‘She helps us to do the necessary thing – open our eyes and our hearts’ – Hilary Mantel, bestselling author of Wolf Hall