Limestone and Clay
A Novel
-
-
2.0 • 2 Ratings
-
-
- $7.99
-
- $7.99
Publisher Description
An unsettled marriage takes a sinister turn in this novel of domestic suspense. It's "pure gold" (Los Angeles Times).
Winner of the Yorkshire Post Author of the Year Award
In a quiet English village, Nadia is a sculptor driven by an obsession to conceive a child. Creating is in her blood. Her husband Simon is a geology professor and spelunker determined to finish a project beneath the earth's surface that has already killed one man.
Each consumed by private passions, the two live a blinkered coexistence, until Nadia makes an unsettling discovery: Simon's former girlfriend, Celia, is pregnant. But if Celia's husband is sterile, then who has made Celia such a happy and intolerably boastful mother-to-be? For Nadia, the answer is the ultimate, unforgivable betrayal. Now, as Simon's job takes him into the deep unknown, Nadia descends into darkness as well. And before the night is over, everyone is going to pay.
"Before Gillian Flynn, there was Lesley Glaister," says Harper's Bazaar, and in Limestone and Clay, she once again mines the horror of love as "a jangle-nerved young married couple cook their respective obsessions to a nightmare boil" (Kirkus Reviews).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Motherhood, artistic creativity and the mysterious powers of the earth are among the weighty themes tackled in this affecting novel from English author Glaister ( Digging to Australia ). Nadia, a potter, lives with her spelunking boyfriend Simon in an unnamed English town. ``Darkly, strongly female'' though Nadia is, she has never been able to bring a pregnancy to term: memories of a recent, second-trimester miscarriage are overwhelmingly painful. Shortly before Nadia's baby would have been due, Simon thoughtlessly agrees to impregnate his former lover Celia, whose husband is sterile. Nadia is bruised when she hears that breezy, arrogant Celia is pregnant and furious when she discovers that Simon is the unborn child's father. Simon's infidelity proves to be the catalyst for the couple's parallel journeys of self-discovery: while Simon risks his life exploring an unmapped cave on his own, Nadia finds an unexpected way to play at motherhood. Sensational as this plot line may sound, it simply serves as a framework for a meditation on the relations between men and women. Vivid, sensual descriptions of daily life cleverly amplify the narrative's larger events: ``Something about the ordinary process of fishing the wet brown teabag out of the cup, the useless wodge leaking thick brown onto the silver surface of the draining-board, causes her to moan.'' Drawn with exceptional clarity, Glaister's complicated, fallible characters linger in the reader's mind.
