The Ophelia Girls
The Most Immersive, Intoxicating Read of the Year
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- 4,99 €
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- 4,99 €
Descrizione dell’editore
Set between two fateful summers, Jane Healey's The Ophelia Girls is a heady exploration of illicit desire, infatuation and the perils and power of being a young woman.
'An immersive, intoxicating summer read with the long-lasting feel of a classic' - Molly Aitken, author of The Island Child
Summer, 1973. Teenage Ruth and her four friends spend the scorching summer days in the river, recreating tableaus of the drowning Ophelia and other tragic heroines. But as autumn draws nearer, real tragedy has found them.
Summer, 1997. Ruth returns to her childhood home with her husband and three children, including her eldest daughter seventeen-year-old Maeve. However when Stuart, an old family friend comes to stay, the uneasy relationship between mother and daughter is pushed to its limit. For Stuart's arrival is a reminder of a death in Ruth's past, while Maeve is feeling more alive than ever . . .
As the heat of the summer burns, how long can the family go before long-held secrets threaten to burst their banks and drown them all?
'A vivid, sensuous novel . . . I can't recommend it enough' - Anna Bailey, bestselling author of Tall Bones
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Healey (The Animals at Lockwood Manor) captivates with a dark and sensual novel that reveals the inner lives of two teenage girls a generation apart. Middle-aged Ruth Hawkins moves her family into the ramshackle country house in Kent, England, where she spent her childhood, after the death of her estranged father. Her 17-year-old daughter Maeve's cancer is in remission, and she hopes the family can heal together. But returning to the house—and offering the guest house to Stuart, a friend from her youth and now a celebrated photographer—brings back memories of the summer of 1973, a time tinged by love and tragedy. Then, Ruth and her friends were called "the Ophelia Girls" by their parents for posing in maudlin Polaroid photos inspired by pre-Raphaelite paintings and tragic heroines. Now, Maeve, bearing a striking resemblance to the youthful Ruth, secretly agrees to pose for Stuart in a series of suggestive portraits. Imagery of drowning and of natural cycles of bloom and decay suffuses Maeve's narrative and Ruth's flashbacks—and can feel overdone—but Healey excels at probing her characters' psyches. Ruth longs to be a good mother, while Maeve vacillates between not wanting to grow up and wanting Stuart to see her as mature. In the end, this develops into a lush, seductive portrait of desire.
