Gavin McCrea was born in Dublin in 1978 and currently lives in London and northern Spain. He holds an MA and a PhD from the University of East Anglia. Mrs. Engels is his first novel.
Selected as one of Amazon.com's Top 20 Best Books of 2015
Shortlisted for the 2016 Walter Scott Prize for Historical
Fiction
Shortlisted for the 2016 Desmond Elliott Prize
"Lizzie has been brought to life with exuberant force by the
first–time author Gavin McCrea.” —Carmela Ciuraru, The New York
Times
"Impressive. . . .Mr. McCrea draws sharp ironies from the gap
between theory and actuality. . . .A man can help you rise in the
world, Lizzie remarks, in one of the many bluff, indelicate
observations that give her narration its charisma: 'All you have to
do is pick him out right and play him well.'. . .A memorable
portrait of a woman looking for a cause of her own, distinct from
the one made famous by her husband."—Sam Sacks, The Wall Street
Journal
“The illiterate lover and eventual wife of a coauthor of The
Communist Manifesto is the star of this enthralling work of
historical fiction." —O, The Oprah Magazine>
“McCrea's debut is a historical novel told through the
unforgettable voice of Lizzie Burns, the longtime lover of
Frederick Engels. Pulled up from her working–class roots after she
meets Engels, Lizzie is nonetheless excluded from upper–class
society and haunted by her former flame as she struggles to find
her purpose. Sparkling with energy, Lizzie is one of the year's
best characters." —Best Books of 2015, Publishers Weekly
“Friedrich Engels is a frequent name in history books. He was Karl
Marx's Communist collaborator, penning several influential texts of
the era. It may seem surprising, then, considering his academic
pedigree, that his wife was illiterate and uneducated — but truth
is often stranger than fiction”
“McCrea turns the larger–than–life character of Lizzie Burns,
Engels' common–law wife, into one of the most compelling
protagonists of the year. "Mrs. Engels" is historical fiction of
the finest kind, where fact and fiction mix for the better of
both." —Top Fiction Picks of 2015, Minnesota Public Radio
A Boston Globe Fall Fiction Selection.
“Lizzie is as spirited a narrator as a reader could hope to
encounter. As channeled by McCrea, she can turn a humble sentiment
into an extraordinary image, and if expressive language is your
thing, you need to read Mrs. Engels . . . [McCrea] has reached into
history and constructed a rich fictional saga around a woman most
American readers won’t have spent any time at all thinking about.
Historians know a lot more about Engels than they do about
Elizabeth Burns, but McCrea has rendered her unforgettable, a model
of resolve with an extraordinary narrative voice." —The Minneapolis
Star Tribune
“McCrea’s richly imagined debut novel is narrated by Irishwoman
Lizzie Burns, the longtime lover of The Communist
Manifesto coauthor Frederick Engels. . . McCrea gives the
illiterate Lizzie a vivid, convincing voice, sparkling with energy
and not untouched by pathos. Her sharp, pragmatic observations
offer a human perspective on historical icons (Marx has boils,
while Engels is overwhelmed by letters from his mother). But the
heart of the novel is the beautifully realized romance between
Lizzie and Frederick: a mismatch of values and temperaments, yet
also a tender and complex bond." —starred review, Publishers
Weekly
“Irish–born McCrea's stellar debut imagines the lives of Karl Marx
and Frederick Engels, not men usually associated with romance,
through the eyes of Engels' illiterate common–law wife, Lizzie
Burns. Lizzie's voice—earthy, affectionate, and street–smart but
also sly, unabashedly mercenary, and sometimes–scheming—grabs the
reader from the first sentence and doesn't let go. . . Who knew
reading about communists could be so much fun."—starred review,
Kirkus Reviews
“First–novelist McCrea well captures Lizzie’s fiery temperament,
vivid voice, and complicated relationship with Engels, whom she
both longs to marry and longs to be free of. Moving, finely
detailed, rife with full–bodied, humanizing portraits of historical
icons, and told in striking prose, this is a novel to be savored."
—starred review, Booklist
“You can't keep a good woman down—not even one . . . whose humble
background raises eyebrows and hackles in her elite new social
circles. . . Lizzie Burns, the former mill worker who was Friedrich
Engels's real–life lover, speaks her sassy mind in Gavin McCrea's
debut novel, Mrs. Engels." —MORE Magazine
“A dazzling first novel. . . . Fascinating as Lizzie's narrative
and characterization are, it's the writing itself that brings her
story to life. The prose in Mrs. Engels is colorful, unpredictable,
occasionally dense with meaning, always cleverly stylized and
beautifully wrought. McCrea, appropriately for an Irish writer,
invents a kind of contemporary Joycean mélange (in some of the
commentary on this novel, Lizzie has been compared to Molly Bloom)
of words familiar and words invented. . . . Since so little is
known about the historical Lizzie Burns, Gavin McCrea had a great
deal of license in portraying her, a freedom he exploits
brilliantly. It is her earthiness that has prompted critics to
compare her to Molly Bloom—Lizzie, for instance, narrates a number
of most unsentimental sex scenes—and Mrs. Engels implicitly
suggests another parallel in Gustave Flaubert's greatest creation,
his characterization of Emma Bovary. . . . In Mrs. Engels, from its
eloquent first paragraph to its superb last sentence, Gavin McCrea
performs a remarkable feat of language that invites comparison with
the best of recent first novels. It is bound to be widely discussed
and, surely more important, to endure.” —Greg Johnson, The Yale
Review
“Through Lizzie’s singular perspective, peppered with her wry
observations, readers are treated to a backstage look at the
domestic lives of the most public 19th–century revolutionaries and
their families. While Lizzie’s story exists only marginally in the
historical record, first–time novelist McCrea brings her to life in
this soulful work.” —Library Journal
“Mrs. Engels explores the subtleties of a historic movement through
the vantage of Lizzie Burns, Frederick Engels’ longtime companion
and eventual wife.. . . Her position allows the story’s perspective
to refreshingly shift from observing Engels and Marx’s work life
and ideals to registering the domestic decorum and politics that
have shaped Lizzie’s life. As Frederick imagines what could be,
resenting the illusory social norms that dictate what is, Lizzie,
to survive, must occupy herself with the very reality he and his
peers frequently abhor or ignore." —ZYZZYVA Magazine
“This debut novel is told in the voice of Lizzie Burns, Communist
Manifesto co–author Friedrich Engels’s longtime lover. The
illiterate Lizzie left no records so McCrea has had to imagine her
into existence which he has done impressively." —The National
Book Review
“Enormously rich and complex. . . Lizzie's voice is tremendously
well handled and Victorian London, as described through her wry
eyes, explodes on the page."— BookBrowse
“Smartly drawn and enriched by fine characterizations, McCrea’s
story delivers a fascinating love affair, a vivid portrait of
Burns, and a dimensional view of the worlds she inhabited." —Neal
Wyatt, Library Journal's 2015 Book Club Recommendations
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