Marble Heart
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- £5.49
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- £5.49
Publisher Description
A stunning piece of psychological suspense from the author of Araby.
Two very different women brought together by a secret from the past.
Joan has a tentative grip on the world – she’s too trusting, soft-centred, cheery and straightforward, the sort of woman who still keeps teddy bears on her bed. By nature and by profession, Joan is a carer, employed to look after Nina Rawle, a crisp and sophisticated woman, stricken by a long-term illness. There is a very good reason why Joan has been taken on by Nina (nursing skills aside) and Nina’s tangled past in Northern Ireland, in which a single and fatal act of political passion played a destructive role, has a great deal to do with it. How and why Nina will reveal herself to Joan, whose part in Nina’s past is truly significant, makes for a tense and twisting tale.
This is a quite different novel from Araby. We have here a pure piece of storytelling, a psychological tale with more than a touch of Barbara Vine. The fantastic storytelling skills and exploration of character which made Araby such a gem are in abundance in this new novel.
Reviews
From the reviews of Araby:
‘A beautifully observed study of reconciliation. Mulrooney’s ability to make sense of the contradictions in clear, precise prose is the most remarkable achievement of the novel.’
The Times
‘Mulrooney has a real gift for dialogue, the words and phrases ring true and make her characters wonderfully real. A tenderly funny and genuinely moving piece. I loved it.’
Time Out
About the author
Gretta Mulrooney was born in London in 1952. She took a degree in English at the University of Ulster and lived for a few years in Dublin, working as a hospital cleaner, a plastics riveter (fitting together Guinness signs) and teaching English, before returning to England to teach and become a social worker. She has also written children’s fiction.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
British author Mulrooney (Araby) has written a page-turner with meat on its bones, a psychological thriller as dark and satisfying as a pint of Guinness. In contemporary London, retired university lecturer Nina Rawle, debilitated by lupus, hires caregiver Joan Douglas as a companion. Middle-aged Joan, fond of homey aphorisms, cares for acerbic Nina while preparing for marriage to her pen-pal Rich, who is on the verge of release from prison. The two women forge an unlikely friendship, as Nina introduces Joan to new foods and helps her choose a wedding dress. But, as readers learn from a series of letters that Nina is writing to her old friend Majella, Nina is crippled by guilt as well as lupus--she is haunted by a blood secret from her student days in Ireland, when she and Majella participated in Belfast's radical fringe. Mulrooney, writing as Nina, conjures up the heady intensity of that time in a wash of demonstrations, late-night meetings and damp basement rooms, with Nina's fervency rooted in her infatuation with spirited Majella and her dark, charismatic boyfriend, Finn, leader of a local left-wing group. Nina's letters also chronicle her gradual move from blithe activism to violent action, propelled by Finn's manipulations and her loyalty to "the cause." Nina's hidden past and Joan's sunny present converge in a shocking revelation that binds the two women together and threatens to trigger a new tragedy. Although it drags in a few places and feels contrived in others, Mulrooney's novel features characters who are so strong and language so vivid that readers will be riveted to her storytelling.
