A Social-Emotional History of Ireland

Beginning of article

The Truth About Love By Josephine Hart VIRAGO Pounds 12.99 (248pp) Pounds 11.69 (free p&p) from the Independent Bookshop: 0870 079 8897

The Authors surname is propitious. Her subject is the heart; its secret rules and reasons. Damage, her devastating first novel, starts with a whole, relatively stable man and shows him torn apart by romantic obsession. The Truth About Love, her sixth, tells the inverse story: how the heart heals.

The first chapter is disorientating, a gabbling stream of consciousness. Gradually we realise we are in the mind of a mortally wounded child. Oh Mama, I feel all cold and wet He has been injured by a blast from his chemistry set; quite …