Literary Fiction
Latest Novel
The Amber Hours
"Hart writes the way memory works — in fragments, in scent, in the sudden vertigo of recognition."
— The Guardian
The Shelf
2024
The Amber
Hours
Novel · 2024
A woman returns to her childhood home after thirty years, only to find her memories have been curating a lie.
2021
Salt &
Sorrow
Novel · 2021
Two sisters. One coast. The long, quiet aftermath of a catastrophe no one will name.
2018
The Light
We Buried
Debut · 2018
A debut of rare tenderness. A village holds its breath across an entire summer of waiting.
The Author
Born in Cornwall, now writing from a converted barn in Provence, Hart is the author of three internationally acclaimed novels. Her work has been translated into nineteen languages.
Provence, 2024
As featured in
The Books
Latest Novel · 2024
When Clara Vane returns to the Norfolk coast after thirty years, she expects to find the house she grew up in. What she finds instead is a version of her past that has been quietly, methodically rearranged.
The Amber Hours is a novel about the stories families tell instead of the truth, and the particular grief of understanding too late.
"Hypnotic. Hart's sentences are built to last."
— The Times Literary Supplement
Novel · 2021
Two sisters inherit a fishing cottage on the Outer Hebrides. What they cannot inherit is a way of talking about what happened.
Order"Beautifully restrained. A book that trusts its reader."
— New Statesman
Debut · 2018
A debut of rare tenderness. A village on the Somerset Levels holds its collective breath through a summer of heat and waiting.
Order"An extraordinary debut. A novelist fully formed."
— The Observer
For Reading Groups
About
Photo: Maëlle Guichard
Recognition
Booker Prize Longlist, 2024
Costa Novel Award Shortlist, 2024
Baileys Women's Prize, 2021
Betty Trask Award, 2018
19 languages translated
Vivienne Hart was born on the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall in 1979, the youngest of four children in a family of schoolteachers and one largely unacknowledged painter. She spent her twenties in London, working in publishing and writing two novels she has never shown to anyone.
Her debut, The Light We Buried, was published in 2018 to immediate critical acclaim, described by the Observer as "an extraordinary debut — a novelist fully formed." The novel was adapted for BBC Radio 4 in 2020 and has been taught in secondary schools across the UK.
Her second novel, Salt & Sorrow (2021), was shortlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize and longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction. Set across a single week on the Outer Hebrides, it is a novel about grief, silence, and the language of coastlines.
Her most recent novel, The Amber Hours, was published in spring 2024. She lives in Provence with her husband, a ceramicist, and a dog of unremarkable character but strong opinions about walks.
Agent
Emma Rushton
The Marsh
Agency
London
Speaking & Events
For invitations to literary festivals, book clubs, and international events, please use the contact form.
"Every novel is a letter to someone who will never quite be able to write back. That one-way tenderness is why I do this."
— Vivienne Hart, Paris Review Interview, 2023
Get in Touch
Vivienne reads all correspondence personally. She may be slow to reply — the book takes precedence — but she does reply.
For Media & Press
Interview requests, review copies, and press enquiries to press@viviennehart.com
For Rights & Translation
Please contact Emma Rushton at The Marsh Agency directly.
For Reading Groups
Vivienne occasionally joins book clubs by video. Use the form to enquire.