Synopsis
A pleasure island, a place of escape. Los Alcazares is a holiday paradise in the Canary islands, but before the luxury villas were built it was a place fantastic dreams and incredible secrets, an island in the ocean where ley lines cross and tectonic crash, a geological hot spot where you can’t trust anything – not even the earth itself. Kim escaped to her island paradise with Matthew, her lover, a man she wants to trust. Living there is Stella, her old friend, a woman never doubts herself and, it seems, gets everything she wants. But now a man has been killed on Los Alcazares and both Stella and Matthew were there when he died. That’s what they’re saying anyway; but the island is full of talk. At the beach bar where there is no beach, Kim waits for Matthew to find out, finally, who to trust and what to believe. This richly textured novel contrasts the drama of a volcanic eruption two hundred years ago with the lives of the lotus-eaters who have made a playground of the black beaches and the lava fields, but whose certainties are no more stable than the treacherous earth itself. “Told with great skill and masterful timing,” Good Housekeeping. “A complex and cleverly written book,” Image
About the Author
Celia Brayfield is a novelist and cultural commentator. She is the author of nine novels. Wild Weekend explores the tensions in a Suffolk village in homage to Oliver Goldmsith's She Stoops to Conquer. To explore suburban living, she created the community of Westwick and explored mid-life manners in Mr Fabulous And Friends, and the environmental implications of urbanisation in Getting Home. She has often juxtaposed historical and contemporary settings, notably eighteenth century Spain in Sunset, pre-revolutionary St Petersburg in White Ice and Malaysia in the time of World War II in Pearls. Four of her novels have been optioned by major US, UK or French producers.
Her non-fiction titles include two standard works on the art of writing: Arts Reviews (Kamera Books, 2008) and Bestseller (Fourth Estate, 1996.) Her most recent is Deep France (Pan, 2004) a journal of a year she spent writing in south-west France.
She has served on the management committee of The Society of Authors and judged national literary awards including the Betty Trask Award and the Macmillan Silver PEN Prize. A former media columnist, she contributes to The Times, BBC Radio 4 and other national and international media.
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