About the Book:
Elly and Enzo love each other.
Elly and Enzo are breaking up.
Now, everything must go.
When Enzo suddenly walks out on Elly after ten years together, she finds herself marooned in an expensive East London flat, surrounded by all their belongings. She is shell-shocked. Inconsolable. She can't bear to look at the objects that she and Enzo collected together, those innocuous items that define the key moments of every relationship.
Now she's listing it all on Marketplace: the table they found in Italy. The bike he bought for her birthday. Records, luggage, a vintage velvet couch. Anything that tells a story she'd rather forget. Elly thinks that selling these items to total strangers will help her move on from Enzo and heal her devastated heart. But she's about to get a lot more than she bargained for.
All the Beautiful Things You Love is a vivid and vibrant exploration of the things that bring us together and tear us apart, and those keepsakes that populate the wide-open spaces between where love ends and starts again.
Published by Pan Macmillan Australia
Released 30 April 2024
My Thoughts:
This was one of those unexpected novels that seem like one thing on the surface but turn out to be so much more within the depths. All the Beautiful Things You Love is a love story, in reverse. We begin at the end, and as Elly sells all the things that made up her life with Enzo, we become privy to all the moments of their life together, what bound them tightly, and what eventually drove them apart.
This is lifelit at its finest. A story about people, places and feelings - so many feelings. It's my favourite sort of novel nowadays. Character driven rather than plot driven. I spent a glorious Sunday afternoon on my back deck reading this novel from start to finish inside a few hours. I couldn't put it down, or rather, I didn't want to.
Not only does Elly get rid of everything she no longer wants to own, but she also meets some interesting people along the way. Some that become friends, others you wouldn't want to run into again. But the entire exercise of selling everything on Marketplace changes Elly's life for the better. A sort of declutter for the soul as well as the flat.
A beautiful life affirming story that I wouldn't hesitate to recommend.
Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.
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