Birdcage Walk
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- USD 17.99
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- USD 17.99
Descripción editorial
Revolutionary turmoil in France threatens to cross the English border—and tear apart an increasingly tense marriage—in this "brilliant" gothic thriller (Publishers Weekly, starred review).
It is 1792, and Europe is seized by political unrest. In England, Lizzie Fawkes has grown up among Radicals who've followed the French Revolution with eager optimism. But Lizzie has recently married John Diner Tredevant, a developer who is heavily invested in Bristol's housing boom, and he has everything to lose from social upheaval and the prospect of war. As the strain of financial setbacks and the secrets of his past converge upon him, his grip on what he considers his rightful property—including Lizzie—only grows tighter…From an Orange Prize winner and Whitbread Award finalist, this is a novel with a "charged radiance" (The New York Times) that explores romanticism and disillusionment, terror and love, and the dangerous lines between them.
"Dunmore knows how to let a narrative move like an arrow in flight…A man rows from Bristol to a glade where he has left his dead wife overnight. He must bury her fast, where no one will find her. From the start, Birdcage Walk has the command of a thriller as we keep company with John Diner Tredevant, an 18th-century property developer building a magnificent terrace in Clifton, high above the Avon Gorge. Lizzie, his second wife, does not know the details of what happened to his first. Nor do we know as much as we might suppose…The novel's cast is marvelous and vivid."—The Guardian
"Explores the impact of the French Revolution on 1790s England within the context of a gothic romance set in Bristol…[a] magnificently complex villain."—Kirkus Reviews
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This brilliant novel from the late Dunmore addresses the very issues with which all authors must grapple: What does one leave behind as a writer? What is the mark writers leave upon time? The layered story begins with a man coming across the 18th-century headstone of Julia Elizabeth Fawkes, inscribed, "Her Words Remain Our Inheritance." But no record of her writing survives. Dunmore then leads the reader back 200 years to the cover-up of a murder, and then to Lizzy Fawkes Tredevant daughter of the aforementioned Julia, raised among radicals in the English city of Bristol during the tumultuous period of the French Revolution. The willful Lizzy has married John Diner Tredevant, an ambitious builder with a dark past, who is hostile to the new political ideas making their way to England from Paris, ideas he believes may destroy his business prospects. He also resents Lizzy's susceptibility to the influence of her mother and Julia's entourage of English radicals. Lizzy and her mother are very close; when tragedy visits Julia's household, Lizzy is left with an enormous responsibility. As the revolution in France comes to its frenzied zenith, Tredevant's creditors balk, and his project for a terrace of houses in Bristol collapses. As her husband's debts overwhelm them, Lizzy's very life is threatened and John unravels into desperation. Dunmore has left readers with memorable, fascinating characters, both historical and fictional, "whose struggles and passions have been hidden from history.... But even so, did they not shape the future?")
