ABOUT THIS BOOK

A journey with the novels that shape our emotions, our romances, and ourselves

Part memoir, part imagined history, this unique personal essay depicts the intimate experience of childhood bereavement, lost love affairs, and the complicated realities of motherhood and marriage. Framed by an extended train journey, author Sophie Ratcliffe turns to the novels, novelists, and heroines who have shaped her emotional and romantic landscapes. She transports us with her to survey the messiness of everyday life, all while reflecting on steam propulsion and pop songs, handbags and honeymoons, Anna Karenina and Anthony Trollope, former lovers and forgotten muses. Frank, funny, tender, and transporting, Loss, A Love Story asks why we fall in, and out, of love—and how we might understand doing so amid the ongoing upheavals and unwritten futures of the twenty-first century.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

SOPHIE RATCLIFFE is professor of literature and creative criticism at the University of Oxford and a fellow and tutor at Lady Margaret Hall. In addition to her scholarly books, including On Sympathy, she has published commentary pieces and book reviews for the Guardian, the New Statesman, and the Times Literary Supplement, among other outlets, and has served a judge for the Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction and the Wellcome Book Prize. She is married and has two children.

REVIEWS

“A book as much about time and technology as it is about love and grief, Loss, A Love Story is a feat of personal narrative. Sophie Ratcliffe crosses genre borders and traverses boundaries, both imagined and real, reminding us with each movement that a lived life is less a framed photograph than it is a moving train, ferrying us forward in space while also pulling us back in time. This book swept me away.” —Sarah Viren, author of To Name the Bigger Lie: A Memoir in Two Stories

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“Sophie Ratcliffe brings a breathtaking honesty and a cool precision to her imaginative meditation on the lessons of Anna Karenina—it is a true tour de force which is both moving and exhilarating to read.” —Rosamund Bartlett, author of Tolstoy: A Life — -

“With this voyage into grief, longing, eros, and art, Sophie Ratcliffe offers us an intimate, beautifully curated exhibit of history, imagination, revelation, and consolation.” —Margo Jefferson, author of Constructing a Nervous System: A Memoir

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Note
Departures
Hull to Ferriby
St Petersburg to Moscow
Hackney Wick Station
Ferriby to Brough
St Petersburg to Moscow
Hackney Wick Station
Battery Place to Cortlandt Street
Brough to Goole
Hackney Wick Station
West Finchley to Belsize Park
Baker Street to Moorgate Street
St Petersburg Station
Hackney Wick Station
Goole to Thorne North
Hackney Wick Station
Thorne North to Doncaster
Oxford Station
Moscow to St Petersburg
Sheffield to Birmingham New Street
Bologoye Station
Ghost Train
Finchley Central to Burnt Oak
Chalk Farm to Belsize Park
Birmingham New Street to Leamington Spa
Elephant and Castle Station
Paddington Station
Euston to Inverness
Carnforth Station
Tenway Junction
Grand Central to Utah
Leamington to Banbury
Banbury Station
Oxford Station
Sources of Quotations
Further Reading and Sources
Acknowledgments

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