The Haunt : A Novel - Hardcover

Barker, A. L.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0786707844 ISBN 13: 9780786707843

Publisher: Carroll & Graf, 2000

Synopsis

A bewitching tale of the loves that comfort and the longings that haunt us. With sly humor, exquisite dialogue, smooth narrative, and a cast of wholly original characters, this new book by the widely acclaimed novelist and Booker-Prize nominee A. L. Barker explores the legendary Cornish forest and examines the human heart. At the Belle Chasse, a dilapidated seaside hotel on the tip of magical Cornwall, chaos slinks behind the limited amenities, as its weekend guests soon discover - among them, a second-rate artist who's driven a malfunctioning car across England to present his ex-wife with a nude he painted of her years before; a lonely child in need of a friend; and a couple in their sixties, Elissa and Owen Grierson, long-married and now plagued by the painful longings of a no longer magical relationship. If these travelers have come to a world haunted by ancient myths of heroic quests and holy grails, they themselves pursue more ordinary dreams as they stumble over their own enigmas and eccentricities in a way that prompted Auberon Waugh to declare that A. L. Barker "writes like an angel and I love her." "It is a glorious occasion to read a new novel by an author born in 1918 and to find it startlingly fresh, daring and instructive." - Times Literary Supplement; "Almost dauntingly fresh - glancing, mercurial, elusive." - The Observer; "Marries the deadpan timing of Kingsley Amis at his driest with a tinge of eerie nature-mysticism that brings Iris Murdoch to mind.... Hot, sparkling, exciting." - The Independent.

About this title

About the Author:

A. L. Barker (1918-2002) was a short story writer and novelist. Born in St Paul's Cray, Kent, she lived in the same milieu where London borders on Kent and Surrey, for the rest of her life. As her Oxford DNB entry says it was 'the chief setting for her work, which often seemed to partake of the quotidian mysteriousness and even abandonment of these areas.'Her first selection of short stories, Innocents, won the Somerset Maugham award in 1947. Of her short stories, Robert Nye has written, 'stories as carefully composed as poems, quiet and delicate and reserved perhaps, but oddly lingering in the mind.'Although a stranger to commercial success, she never wanted for admirers, Jane Gardam, Francis King, Auberon Waugh, Evelyn Waugh, Rebecca West, John Sutherland, Deborah Moggach, Ronald Blythe, Susan Hill, A. S. Byatt, Adam Mars-Jones, Nina Bawden and Victoria Glendinning being just some of them.A. L. Barker deserves to be better known. Faber Finds is proud to be reissuing her entire oeuvre, six volumes of short stories - Innocents, Novelette with Other Stories, Femina Real, Life Stories, No Words of Love and Element of Doubt - and thirteen novels - Apology for a Hero, A Case Examined, The Joy-Ride and After, Lost Upon the Roundabouts, The Middling, John Brown's Body, Source of Embarrassment, A Heavy Feather, Relative Successes, The Gooseboy, The Woman Who Talked to Herself, Zeph and The Haunt.

From Publishers Weekly:

A rather chaotic hotel on the Cornish coast, Bellechasse is the gathering spot for a large cast of characters, haunted by their own eccentricities and troubled relationships, who assemble for a weekend of, as the brochure proclaims, "peace and plenty." Keeping track of everyone is the only real challenge to readers of this charming, cozy book. Gilbert Eashing, an antiquarian in a wheelchair whose interest is in funerary sculpture, and Mildred Gascoigne, an elderly spinster by choice ("One might choose without being offered a choice"), have come for a holiday, while Pam and Antony Wallington are there to bandage a failing marriage. Charlie Olssen's car has broken down midway on his mission to sell a nude portrait of his ex-wife to her present husband, while Piper, the author of an agony column for those in need of "the knowledge that someone, somewhere cares," busily avoids the attentions of a young freelance reporter called Senga (Agnes backwards). Nearby live Owen and Elissa Grierson, new residents who have moved to Cornwall after Owen's retirement and, in the next cottage over, red-haired Angela Hartop and her small son, James. Barker conveys the intermingling of these well-meaning middle-class folk with a combination of sympathy and gentle wit; the result is funny and intermittently touching. Adultery and even death are treated with a light and forgiving touch; this is a good book to read when in need of serenity. Especially well rendered are the characters over 60; often overlooked in modern fiction, these elderly men and womenAthe creations of an author who was born in 1918Aare more vibrant and vital than the minority of younger characters. (Jan.) FYI: Barker, author of 20 books, won the first Somerset Maugham Prize in 1947 for her collection of stories, Innocents, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1969 for her novel John Brown's Body.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Carroll & Graf
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0786707844
• ISBN 13: 9780786707843
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192