Rousseau’s Lost Children

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What to expect

'Inventive, intimate, often devastating . . . packs a heavy emotional punch, producing a deeply affecting account of power and connection and its ability to entrap us, even in love' Irish Times

'Smart, formally playful, and psychologically astute, Rousseau's Lost Children is a novel of ideas with moral insight and real emotional power' Ferdia Lennon, author of Glorious Exploits

Paris, 1777. The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau receives a mysterious letter from a foreign visitor, Gavin Mulvany, asking whether the great man will take walks with him. Against his better judgement, Rousseau agrees. Might this stranger, who claims to be from the twenty-first century, be the true friend that Rousseau has been searching for his whole life?

Paris, 2022. Gavin, a middle-aged academic, leaves his husband behind in Ireland to finish a long-delayed biography of Rousseau. While in Paris, he avoids work on his book by instead taking walks with Rousseau himself. As they wander the streets, Gavin and Rousseau open up about certain past actions that have come to define them. Was Rousseau justified in abandoning his children? Should Gavin be forgiven for the terrible crime he committed to protect a man he once loved? Can talking and walking together lead both Gavin and Rousseau to finally be honest with themselves and their loved ones, and to a better understanding of what love, family, and society really mean?

Rousseau's Lost Children is a thrilling epistolary novel cast across centuries, a bold and illuminating investigation into the boundaries of personal liberty and matters of morality, desire and loyalty.

Critics Review

Smart, formally playful, and psychologically astute, Rousseau's Lost Children is a novel of ideas with moral insight and real emotional power
Ferdia Lennon, author of GLORIOUS EXPLOITS
A masterful work of imagination, intellect and empathy that further cements McCrea as a singular voice in literature. This is a formally inventive fusion of historical and contemporary fiction that succeeds in illuminating both the past and the present with profound vision and grace
Helen Cullen, author of THE TRUTH MUST DAZZLE GRADUALLY
A hugely inventive and rich novel from a major storytelling talent
Joseph O'Connor, author of THE GHOSTS OF ROME
Rosseau's Lost Children is such an original, absorbing, illuminating novel; an exploration of life's big themes - love, loyalty and truth - from a writer of tremendous skill and brilliance
Sara Baume, author of SEVEN STEEPLES
A novel quite unlike anything else. McCrea is an astonishingly talented writer, the breadth of his ability matched only by the magnitude of his ambition. His formal risks pay off in spades. This is an astounding narrative achievement. I loved every page
Donal Ryan, author of THE QUEEN OF DIRT ISLAND
Rousseau's Lost Children pulls off the admirable feat of being as fun to read as it is creatively daring and rich with ideas. The glare of Enlightenment philosophy and the moral murk of contemporary sexual politics collide in the strange prism of Gavin McCrea's imagination
Robert Doyle, author of THRESHOLD
Part novel, part biography, part philosophical workout, Rousseau's Lost Children interrogates some of the wackier as well as most cherished Enlightenment principles. Gavin grapples with age-old conundrums: conflicts between desire and morality, ideology and practice, and self and society. Read the book with a Plan de Paris at hand and see the City of Light with fresh eyes
The Spectator
Inventive . . . a novel pairing the teachings of Rousseau with an intimate, often devastating, story of a teacher and student . . . Rousseau's Lost Children, expansive and philosophical all at once, proves a shattering study of power perverted by a mentor, and the moral lessons left in the aftermath . . . packs a heavy emotional punch, producing a deeply affecting account of power and connection and its ability to entrap us, even in love
Irish Times
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