Mary George of Allnorthover
A Novel
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- CHF 18.00
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- CHF 18.00
Beschreibung des Verlags
A prize-winning poet explores the secrets and strivings of a small English village in this debut novel of “precise, lyrical prose” (Publishers Weekly).
Essex, England, 1970s. The day Tom Hepple returns to the village of Allnorthover, he stops at the local reservoir, beneath which lies his childhood home. Looking for a sign, he sees seventeen-year-old Mary George—who appears to be walking on water. Mary knows her life is far from miraculous, but as she contends with family and dating, navigating town festivals and raves shows, Tom becomes increasingly obsessed.
Meanwhile, the small, orderly world of Allnorthover is being disrupted by power cuts, petrol shortages, and drought. The brash noise of punk rock is infiltrating the village hall, and London is getting closer all the time. As buried secrets begin to surface, Mary George is caught up in old dramas and new changes she struggles to comprehend.
The T.S. Eliot Prize-winning poet Lavinia Greenlaw both recalls and subverts the traditions of nineteenth-century literature in this debut novel of family, community and the meaning of inheritance.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Precise, lyrical prose distinguishes London poet Greenlaw's haunting debut novel, set in a dying English country village in the 1970s. British reticence and punk music provide the backdrop for the story of 17-year-old Mary George, a young woman growing up without direction. When Tom Hepple, a local who has spent the last decade in psychiatric care, returns to Allnorthover, he seeks out his childhood home, long since buried under the town's reservoir. An optical trick leads him to believe that he sees Mary walking on water above his home, a belief spurred by both his mental turmoil and the burden of family trauma. Although Tom's twin brother and other of his family members try to deflect Tom's obsession, he compulsively pursues the girl. Meanwhile, Mary simply tries to remain invisible as she contends with her own insecurities. Both of her parents are off-kilter: her architect father lives like a recluse outside town, and her mother pleads with Mary to remember her father's indiscretions and his past dealings with the Hepples (referring to a scandal that the reader learns about only gradually) while assuring her of Tom's harmlessness. Mary is also figuring out how to belong to a family, to a group of friends, to a boyfriend and her search dredges up further secrets and class tensions. At town festivals and rave shows, the pre-goth Mary and a band of sympathetic characters move slowly in different directions, but also toward an inexorable and tragic denouement. Greenlaw sets her secret-filled story in a meticulously realistic setting a village where all the families are intertwined by shared history and where fuel shortages and power cuts signal the disruption that will follow. Rights sold in Germany and the Netherlands.
