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Bringing together cultural analysis and textual readings on critically-acclaimed bestseller and winner of the prestigious Women's Prize for Fiction, Maggie O'Farrell, this collection covers her nine novels, her memoir I Am, I Am, I Am, two children's books and features an exclusive interview with the author herself. The first full-length study of O'Farrell's work, this book offers critical explorations from her earliest works to the award-winning Hamnet and most recent best-selling novel, The Marriage Portrait. With a timeline of her life and works, as well as suggested further reading, the themes explored include grief and sacrifice, longing and belonging, trauma, translation, palimpsestic texts and the relation of her work to history and the female domestic gothic.
With wry humour and real freshness, SNAPPER charts the disastrous love affair between career birdwatcher Nathan Lochmueller and the place that made him. Set in a brilliantly observed rural Indiana, 'the bastard son of the Midwest', SNAPPER is a book about birdwatching, a woman who won't stay true, and a pick-up truck that won't start. Here turtles eat alligators for breakfast, Klansmen skulk in the undergrowth, and truckers drop into the diner of a town named Santa Claus to ensure that no child's Christmas letter goes unanswered, while Nathan grapples with the eternal question: should I stay, or should I go? Kimberling's vision of small-town life is as characterful as Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon, but bristling with the tensions of race, class, poverty and prejudice, it makes for a bracing read.
While the concept of the fictional character has been widely discussed at interdisciplinary level, a foundational theory of character creation is yet to follow. As a result, creative writing students and beginner writers refer to post-construction analysis, as well as the step-by-step advice often suggested by popular writing manuals. Aiming to fill this gap and at the same time reconcile approaches in writing and criticism, this book proposes a theory of character creation based on the in-depth analysis of the concept, as well its place within the narrative. The approach suggested herein consists of two interrelated stages: conceptualisation and exposition. Conceptualisation entails the in-...
LOOK AT ME is a superb coming-of-age novel and an unsettling yet entertaining exploration of grief. 'A sharp-eyed novel about grief, family and understanding' Woman & Home Magazine Lizzy's mother died two years ago, leaving a family bereft by her absence and a house still filled with her things. Then, one day, Lizzy finds a letter from a stranger to her father, and discovers he has another child. Lizzy invites her into their world in an act of outraged defiance. Almost immediately, she realises her mistake. 'A clever exploration of family and grief, which will appeal to fans of Harriet Lane' RED MAGAZINE 'A creepy, claustrophobic family drama...a welcome breath of fresh air in the era of huge doorstep novels ' GLAMOUR Magazine
Sally, a successful actress, returns to her house in Goatstown from a European tour, just wanting to rest and to see her husband, Charlie, again. When Charlie announces that he's leaving her, Sally angrily forces him to pack his bags at once. But maybe, she wonders later, she really is too hard to live with? Hoping for some glimmer of insight into the family secrets that have always dogged her, Sally turns to her grandfather, the frosty old Bishop she has never really known.
For readers of THE VIRGIN SUICIDES or THE GIRLS, a story of two extraordinary, magnetic women and their disappearances - a hundred years apart - from the small New England town they call home. Henrietta and Jane are growing up in a farmhouse on the outskirts of town, their mother a remote artist, their father in thrall to the folklore and legend of their corner of New England. When Henrietta falls under the spell of Kaus, an outsider and petty criminal, Jane takes to trailing the couple, spying on their trysts, until one night, Henrietta vanishes into the woods. Elspeth and Claire are sisters separated by an ocean. Elspeth's pregnancy at seventeen meant she was quickly married and sent away ...
THE LETTERS FROM THE SUITCASE by Rosheen and Cal Finnigan reveals the detailed and poignant wartime romance between David and Mary Francis. For readers of Sheila Hancock's MISS CARTER'S WAR or Helen Simonson's MAJOR PETTIGREW'S LAST STAND 'I still have that recurring fear of something happening to me before I see you again, and before I can tell you myself just how much and how often I've realised during the last few months that I love you completely and to the exclusion of all others. Remember that, because if there wasn't you, my darling Mary, the world would seem very empty and meaningless.' Mary and David Francis were only twenty-one and nineteen when they met in 1938. They fell in love ...
THE PIRATE'S DAUGHTER by Margaret Cezair-Thompson is an unforgettable story of love and adventure, spanning three decades of Jamaican history. Jamaica, 1946. Errol Flynn washes up on in the Zaca, his storm-wrecked yacht. Ida Joseph, the teenaged daughter of Port Antonio's Justice of the Peace, is intrigued to learn that the 'World's Handsomest Man' is on the island, and makes it her business to meet him. For the jaded swashbuckler, Jamaica is a tropical paradise that Ida, unfazed by his celebrity, seems to share. Soon Flynn has made a home for himself on Navy Island, where he entertains the cream of Hollywood at parties that become a byword for decadence - and Ida has set her heart on marrying this charismatic older man who has singled her out for his attention. Flynn and Ida do not marry, but Ida bears Flynn a daughter, May, who will meet her father but once. The Pirate's Daughter is a tale of passion and recklessness, of two generations of women and their battles for love and survivial, and of a nation struggling to rise to the challenge of hard-won independence.
Once, the villagers would tip their hats respectfully when the McMahons drove out through the ornate iron gates at the end of the drive. But that was back in the days when the Major's family were prosperous. Now the estate is slipping into peaceful decay - and so, it seems, is the Major, its last occupant. Then Minnie, the Major's rebellious niece, returns home. She disrupts his tranquillity, forming surprising friendships with the feckless Kelly family. For together, Minnie and Kevin Kelly have hatched a plan to raise badly needed money - a plan which involves the gates themselves...
Naomi Ishiguro's fresh, magical and delightfully speculative short story collection merges the inventiveness of David Mitchell and the fairy-tale allure of Angela Carter to form its own powerful magic. Witness what happens when a space-obsessed child conjures up a vortex in his mother's airing cupboard in Shearing Season. Watch unexpected possibilities open up in The Flat Roof when a musician makes friends with a flock of birds. Get lost in the world of The Rat Catcher where, finding himself potentially out of his depth when he is summoned to a decaying royal palace, a rat catcher is plunged into a battle for the throne of a ruined kingdom. In this stunning debut collection, the characters yearn for freedom and flight, and find their worlds transformed beyond their wildest imaginings. 'Naomi Ishiguro's crystal clear prose delights and intrigues' Sharlene Teo 'Winsomely written and engagingly quirky, these are inventive tales that favour imagination over gritty realism.' The Sunday Times 'Ishiguro's imagination is a place where the fantastical lurks in the margins as a possibility, a flavour rather than a genre' The Herald