''A gripping narrative - a deeply moving study of love, loss and solitude'' Independent on Sunday

Celebrated nineteenth-century concert pianist and composer, editor and teacher, friend of Brahms - Clara Schumann was also the wife of Robert Schumann, the mother of his eight children, and the woman who cared for him through a series of crippling mental illnesses.

A lyrical and vibrant account of two remarkable and highly dramatic musical careers, Clara is a novel about timeless, common things: about the inescapable influences of childhood, about creativity and marital life, about communication and silence, about how art is made and how art, in turn, may erode or save the life that nourishes it.

''Some of the greatest words ever written on thwarted love since Romeo and Juliet'' The Times