LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025
A Book of the Year in The Times and The Critic

'A quietly devastating masterpiece'. MARIAN KEYES
'Adam is a master storyteller.' SARA COLLINS
'Love Forms achieves a sort of alchemy.' FINANCIAL TIMES
'Reads like a Claire Keegan short story expanded by Elizabeth Strout.' THE TIMES

In the heart-aching new novel from the author of the award-winning Golden Child, a mother searches for the daughter she left behind a lifetime ago.

Trinidad, 1980: Dawn Bishop, aged 16, leaves her home and journeys across the sea to Venezuela. There, she gives birth to a baby girl, and leaves her with nuns to be given up for adoption.

Dawn tries to carry on with her life - a move to England, a marriage, a career, two sons, a divorce - but through it all, she still thinks of the child she had in Venezuela, and of what might have been.

Then, forty years later, a woman from an internet forum gets in touch. She says that she might be Dawn's long-lost daughter, stirring up a complicated mix of feelings: could this be the person to give form to all the love and care a mother has left to offer?


'From the very first page, I knew I was in the hands of a master storyteller. An utterly arresting tale of love and grief, of the wounding and healing powers of family, of the many guises of a mother's love. It's an absolute triumph.'
SARA COLLINS
'Exquisitely written. A compelling and tender story of what - and who - is hidden in almost every family that feels as old as the hills and yet acutely contemporary.'
MONIQUE ROFFEY
'An arresting voice that made me think of silk: its delicate beauty belies its intrinsic strength.'
CLAIRE KILROY
'A compelling read taking us to the heart of difficult family situations and evocative secret places.'
ROMESH GUNESEKERA

Claire Adam was born and raised in Trinidad and Tobago. She was educated in the US and now lives in London with her husband and two children. Golden Child was her first novel. It won the Desmond Elliott Prize, the McKitterick Prize, the Authors Club Best First Novel Award and was named one of BBC's '100 Novels that Changed the World'.