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The Amateur Science of Love
Published 2 January 2014
ISBN 9781922147776
Format Paperback
Extent 288pp
AU Price $22.99
NZ Price $30.00

The Amateur Science of Love

Formats & editions
Paperback
2 Jan 2014
EBook
30 May 2011
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They say we fall in love. But really we fall in sickness. I lost appetite for food in those two nights with Tilda. My stomach was sunken in its wishbone cavity. Me, I was never sick, but I was sick now, the strangest sickness that made my eyes gleam green with excellent health. They had shiny white edges. My cheeks were glossed in a fresh oil of pink.

Colin dreams of escaping his parents' New Zealand farm for a grand stage career. He makes it to London and a disastrous audition before meeting Tilda—beautiful Tilda, older, an artist—who brings his future with her. A heady romance leads to a new home in a decaying former bank in a small town hours from Melbourne. They are building a life together—but there are cracks in the foundation... 

This is a love story, told from passionate beginning to spectacular end. It is intimate and honest, blackly funny and emotionally devastating.
Published 2 January 2014
ISBN 9781922147776
Format Paperback
Extent 288pp
AU Price $22.99
NZ Price $30.00

About the author

Craig Sherborne

Craig Sherborne’s memoir Hoi Polloi was shortlisted for the Queensland and Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards. The follow-up, Muck, won the Queensland Literary Award for Non-fiction. Sherborne’s debut novel, The Amateur Science of Love, won the Best Writing Prize in the 2012 Melbourne Prize for Literature and was shortlisted for the NSW and Victorian Premiers’ Awards. He has also written two volumes of poetry, and his journalism and poetry have appeared in most of Australia’s leading literary journals and anthologies. His two most recent novels are Tree Palace, shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, and Off the Record.
portrait photo of Craig Sherborne

Also by Craig Sherborne

The Grass Hotel
Off the Record
Tree Palace
See all

Praise for The Amateur Science of Love

'All women with lingering illusions about the way men think should read this fast-moving, sharply focused, fantasy-shattering little thunderclap of a book.' Helen Garner

PRH, PRH

'I can't fault this book — the characters are solid and believable, the storyline unpredictable and the rural Australian imagery vivid. The science of love and lust in its many forms is played out convincingly through Colin and Tilda and is not told in an overly soppy or trite way — it's tangible and that's what works so well.' Australian Bookseller & Publisher

PRH, PRH

'Sherborne excels at taking subject matter that has been written about a million times before and making the reader feel as though they are experiencing it for the first time…This is a frank, fun and fearless romantic tale that readers are also bound to fall in love with.' **** Good Reading

PRH, PRH

'Intelligent and unusual…a perceptive study of self-absorption, of cruelty that chooses not to face itself, the discerning psychological portrait of a numbed heart and conscience.' Weekend Australian

PRH, PRH

'Darkly comic and scarily true, this is an account of a love affair from the very moment of its conception. The anatomy of love is thoroughly dissected, leaving its seamy underbelly exposed...Acutely observed and richly drawn, this love is not one you would wish on your worst enemy, but it is fascinating, funny and unputdownable until the bitter end.' Sunday Herald Sun

PRH, PRH