In the place of fallen leaves - Hardcover

PEARS, Tim

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 024113322X ISBN 13: 9780241133224

Publisher: Hamish Hamilton, 1993

Synopsis

Selected by BOMC as a candidate for the Best First Fiction Award of 1995, this stunning novel has received wide acclaim. This captivating debut novel roams the dry valley or a rural English village during the summer drought of 1984, revealing lushness in simplicity and the awesome untapped power and wisdom of a girl on the verge of womanhood.--Kirkus Review.

About this title

About the Author

Tim Pears is the author of eight novels: In the Light of Morning, In the Place of Fallen Leaves (winner of the Hawthornden Prize and the Ruth Hadden Memorial Award), Wake Up, Blenheim Orchard, In a Land of Plenty(made into a ten-part BBC series), A Revolution of the Sun, Landed (shortlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award 2012 and the 2011 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, winner of the MJA Open Book Awards 2011), and Disputed Land. He has been Writer in Residence at Cheltenham Festival of Literature and Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Oxford Brookes University, and has taught creative writing at Ruskin College and elsewhere. He lives in Oxford with his wife and children. timpears.com

From Publishers Weekly

In this piercingly beautiful, fiercely lyrical first novel, narrator Alison Freemantle, 13, awakens to love, sexuality, death, class divisions and the mystery of life on a farm in a Devonshire village during the summer of 1984. Alison's father drinks himself into a stupor on rough cider and neglects her overworked, unhappy mother. Pamela, her older sister who's always preoccupied with dating, seems remote. Her two brothers-Ian, an insomniac chess prodigy, and Tom, a bumpkin who feels closer to animals than to people until he falls swooningly, comically in love-will come to blows over the same girl. Meanwhile, Jonathan, a viscount's son, rescues Alison from drowning, but their platonic friendship is declared off-limits after a barn they explore accidentally catches fire. Through stories told to Alison by her crippled grandmother, the lives of the girl's relatives and of villagers-their tragedies, courtships and crises, over 50 years-are revealed. Pears evokes unspoken bonds of love, a sense of community, organic connectedness to nature in a remarkable debut, a work shot through with moments of great tenderness, beauty and emotional power.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hamish Hamilton
• Publication date: 1993
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 024113322X
• ISBN 13: 9780241133224
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1