Nourishment - Softcover

Gerard Woodward

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0330519948 ISBN 13: 9780330519946

Publisher: Pan MacMillan, 2010

Synopsis

This is the stunning new novel from the Man Booker Prize and Whitbread Prize shortlisted author. With her children evacuated and her husband at the front, Tory Pace is grudgingly sharing the family home with her irascible mother. As Tory works at the local gelatine factory - doing her bit for the war effort - her mother has established herself as matriarch and together they are doing as well as could be expected in difficult times. Tory's quiet life is thrown into turmoil, however, when her prisoner-of-war husband, Donald, makes an outrageous demand for sexual gratification. He wants a dirty letter, by return of post! Horrified, at first, that Donald is being turned into some sort of monster by the Nazis, Tory's disgust gradually gives way to a sense of marital duty, and taking in the libraries, bookshops, public conveniences and barbers' shops of South-East London, she begins a quest to master the language of carnal desire: a quest that takes a sudden and unexpected turn into far more dangerous territory. When Donald returns home, damaged and deranged, at the end of the war, Tory has a few things to explain. But Donald has his own secret plans for their future, and the ensuing tangle of lies, misplaced loyalties and uneasy alliances has repercussions that extend deep into the austerity years that followed the Second World War. Beginning with an act of unintentional cannibalism, and flirting with a scheme to end world hunger by the use of protein pills, Nourishment ranges widely across the Continent and yet always returns home: to family, to people, to relationships. Woodward offers a prescient examination of the ways in which we both nurture and consume each other in the face of adversity.

About this title

About the Author

Gerard is the author of an acclaimed sequence of novels, August (shortlisted for the 2001 Whitbread First Novel Award), I'll Go to Bed at Noon (shortlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize) and A Curious Earth. He was born in London in 1961, and published several prize-winning collections of poetry before turning to fiction. His latest collection of poetry, We Were Pedestrians was shortlisted for the 2005 T.S.Eliot Prize. He is Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and lives in Bath with his family.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pan MacMillan
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0330519948
• ISBN 13: 9780330519946
• Binding: Paperback