Clara

One of the great things historical novels can do is bring previously sidelined figures into the centre, and Galloway’s book is perhaps my favourite example of this. The title character is the nineteenth-century German pianist and composer, Clara Schumann, nee Wieck. We first meet her as a child prodigy, controlled by her overbearing father, and then come to know her as Clara Schumann, hardworking musician, mother, and wife to the increasingly erratic Robert Schumann. Galloway makes you feel as if you know what it’s like to live as a nineteenth-century woman, and a famous and gifted one at that.