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Daughters of the House
A Booker Prize Finalist, Daughters of the House is Michèle Roberts' acclaimed novel of secrets and lies revealed in the aftermath of World War II. Thérèse and Léonie, French and English cousins of the same age, grow up together in Normandy. Intrigued by parents' and servants' guilty silences and the broken shrine they find in the woods, the girls weave their own elaborate fantasies, unwittingly revealing the village secret and a deep shame that will haunt them in their adult lives.
Negative Capability
Yesterday ended in disaster. Very late at night, I decided to write down everything that had happened; the only way I could think of coping.Following a series of devastating rejections, Michèle Roberts began keeping an account of her life in the hope it might help mend her shattered sense of self. In this intimate and wryly honest journal she reflects on cities and countryside, loss and love, food, friendships, sisterhood, pleasure and memories, her abiding relationship with France and with literature. Over the course of a year a new pattern of being develops, until, finally, she finds a better relationship between inner and outer worlds.
Reader, I Married Him
Who is Aurora? Every time she becomes a new Mrs (three times when we last counted) she becomes a new woman. Her stepmother thinks Aurora is impractical, romantic and dreamy. The fact that she gets married so often only goes to prove it. 'Every woman owes it to herself to get married once, but you don't have to make a habit of it.' But now, all alone. . . ? 'Aurora, given the chance to be true to herself, rather than to her trio of husbands, turns out to be a world-class minx. After Hugh's funeral, she goes to Italy to visit her old radical-feminist friend, Leonora, now the abbess of the Brigandine convent in Padenza. True to the tradition of convent-educated girls in fiction, Aurora flings herself into a voluptuous life of lunches and lovers. Chiselled phrasing and dancing plot . . . a sizzling firework display of a book' Sunday Times.
Cut Out
A lyrical tale of family secrets and self-discovery. Denis knows his mother kept things from him. His godmother, Clemence, knows the truth. In rich, sensuous prose, Roberts interweaves Denis's search for answers with Clemence's memories of the time she spent working for Matisse.
Mud
Chosen as a Fiction Book of the Year in the Daily Telegraph by Maggie O'Farrell In this witty and subversive collection of stories, Michèle Roberts explores women's desires, memories and loves as only she can. A jilted woman skirts the edges of time and place as she walks the streets of London at night; another returns to the scene of her honeymoon without her husband; a wife takes apt revenge on her vegetarian husband . . .
The Mistressclass
Adam is a writer, struggling to come to terms with the death of his painter father, Robert, and his difficult marriage to Catherine. Before he married Catherine, he had been the lover of her sister, Vinny. The classic menage à trois seems about to repeat itself, when Adam discovers his wife's father was less innocent than he had thought. Set mainly in contemporary London, partly in France, the action also harks back to the 1970's. The narrative evokes the style of the nineteenth century novelists and their themes: desire, guilt, pleasure. Pastoral landscapes alternate with those of the inner city and the past's interaction with the present is acted out by ghosts. The dead father haunts his son; in real life Vinny haunts her sister; and the whole novel is haunted by one of its great earliest exponents, Charlotte Bronte, and her passionate search for creative fulfilment.
During Mother's Absence
Subversive, sensual tales, wise and witty fictions; this collection of short stories from one of Britain's most acclaimed novelists is by turns shockingly delicious and soberingly disquieting. When mother is away taboos are breached, the untouchables embraced and the forbidden tasted. In 'Laundry' a poor, plain girl takes devilish pleasure in outwitting the pious monks and nuns she washes for. In the haunting, powerful fable 'Anger' a young woman, branded by fire at birth by her mother is scarred- and blessed- for life. In the highly sensuous 'Taking it Easy' a mother with writers block finds an escape from the slavery of her twin enemies by turning them into food for thought. And in the beautiful, arresting 'God's House' a young girl faces the ultimate mother's absence.
The Last Life
A “mesmerizing” novel of a family falling apart by the New York Times bestselling author of The Burning Girl. Set in colonial Algeria, the south of France, and New England, and narrated by a fifteen-year-old girl with a ruthless regard for the truth, The Last Life is the tale of the LaBasse family, whose quiet integrity is shattered by the shots from a grandfather’s rifle. As their world suddenly begins to crumble, long-hidden shame emerges: a son abandoned by the family before he was even born, a mother whose identity is not what she has claimed, and a father whose act of defiance brings Hotel Bellevue—the family business—to its knees. From the PEN/Faulkner Award-nominated author of The Emperor’s Children, named one of the best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review, this novel skillfully reveals how the stories we tell ourselves, and the lies to which we cling, can turn on us in a moment. “[A] tour de force . . . every step feels stunningly sure.” —Vogue
A Piece of the Night
This is the story of Julie—the dutiful daughter, the romantic heroine, the perfect wife and mother. The woman who seeks nothing but acceptance. But Julie knows she is also the witch, the whore, the madwoman, the insatiable, the lesbian. As her two worlds threaten to collide and fall apart, Julie realizes she must come to terms with the different aspects of her psyche, and that she must fight to find an identity uniquely her own.
The Book of Mrs Noah
A woman visiting Venice fantasizes that she is Mrs Noah. With her on a journey of self-exploration are five story-telling Sybils representing different aspects of women's experience down the centuries. Listening to their tales is a rakish old man. The author won the 1992 W.H. Smith Literary Award.
