When William Hazlitt published 'Liber Amoris', his "book of love", in 1823, scandal rocked the literary world. He had chosen as the object for his grand Romantic passion a mere serving maid - and she had disillusioned him by proving just as tawdry as all the rest. But what of Sarah Walker, the victim of Hazlitt's unfortunate obsession?
In a magnificent work of imaginative empathy, Anne Haverty rescues her from silence and obscurity to let her tell her side of the story. "He has put me in a book," she says. "He has used but a steel nib for his weapon but he has destroyed me as sure as if he used a blade and impaled me upon it." She describes her gradual seduction by the wild man of letters - day by day, hour by hour - as she tries to ward off inappropriate advances without offending him, but can't help being fascinated by his stories of revolutionary France and the pleasures of Italy.
'The Far Side Of A Kiss' is a gripping, heartbreaking novel of Romantic folly and below-stairs pragmatism. With an extraordinary lightness of touch and considerable wit, Haverty summons up London life in a nineteenth-century boarding house and the mutual incomprehension between the literary world and the working class. She creates in Sarah an unforgettable character full of silliness and wisdom, unhappiness and vivacity, naivety and intelligence. By the final chapter, readers can only sympathise with Mr Hazlitt and be in love with Sarah themselves.
