Mary George of Allnorthover - Hardcover

Lavinia Greenlaw

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0007105959 ISBN 13: 9780007105953

Publisher: HM Co, 2001

Synopsis

a mesmerizing debut from a major new English novelistTheres something about Mary George "And what happens if your face fits but you dont" Tom enquired. "When you belong to it, the place holds you so tight, you might not notice how it squeezes."Tom Hepple had to come back to Allnorthover. And there she was again, that girl who walked on water, out onto the new lake above his childhood home. The memory gushes painfully back for Tom, and its undertow carries the girl, Mary George, off. Mary is a strange and lovely creature, a young woman who seems to be more important to many of those in the village than she is to herself. Her importance comes to leak slowly into her life as the layers of history and memory, of secrets and misapprehensions, peel away.Lavinia Greenlaw puts before us the monochrome, immemorial middle England of the 1970s in all its dowdy glory, and has us see through young Marys eyes how a seemingly static landscape is suddenly illuminated by the most vivid bursts of energy, colour and drama. Punks torch flares into life and singes the fringes of England. Mary George bears witness and burns brighter still: she is more memorable than even the extraordinary events around her, and the reader will find it devastatingly hard to leave her company, at the end of this exceptional debut.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"With perceptiveness and verve, Lavinia Greenlaw charts the travails of a spunky new heroine, Mary George, caught in the treacheries and stagnancy of an English backwater in the 1970s." –Edna O'Brien

"[Lavinia Greenlaw's] vibrant prose turns monochrome middle England into a surreal, shimmering vision." –Tatler

"Beautifully observed...Greenlaw's nostalgia is palpable, but it is never sentimental, nor is her portrait of an the eccentric but loveable Mary George." –Vogue (U.K.)

"What is most impressive, ultimately, is the strength and solidity of the house Greenlaw builds around the reader: every brick carefully aligned, necessary, and true." – Independent on Sunday

"This is a terrific first novel." –Evening Standard

"Excellent...There is a timelessness to the story, whose pointillism of style reminded me of Elizabeth Bowen." –Observer

"A realism which undercuts melodrama...Lavinia Greenlaw establishes an easy authority over her new genre." –Times Literary Supplement

"From the opening pages of Lavinia Greenlaw's Mary George of Allnorthover, I found myself equally spellbound by her endearing, myopic heroine and her witty, wicked prose. This is a vivid and absorbing novel, with a wonderful sense of surprise." –Margot Livesey

About the Author:

LAVINIA GREENLAW is the author of two books of poetry, Night Photograph (1993), which was shortlisted for the Whitbread and Forward awards, and A World Where News Travelled Slowly (1997), which won the Forward Prize. She is currently working at the Poetry Library, having previously been Writer-in-Residence at the Science Museum, at a law practice, and in several schools. Some of her poetry will be appearing on a set of stamps being issued in the summer of 2000 by the Royal Mail. She lives in north London, with her partner and daughter.

About this edition

• Publisher: HM Co
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0007105959
• ISBN 13: 9780007105953
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1