- Paperback: 240 pages
- Publisher: Jonathan Cape Ltd; First Edition edition (1 July 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0224059890
- ISBN-13: 978-0224059893
- Product Dimensions: 21.2 x 13.6 x 2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,205,134 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Amazon.co.uk Review
Twelve is a dreadful age for almost any girl, with its nonstop insecurity and humiliation. But May, the heroine of Galaxy Craze's By the Shore, seems to suffer considerably more than her share of unhappiness. Ignored by the popular clique at school, dressed by her mother in retro-hippie fashions that are anything but cool, she's a virtual poster child for pre-teen angst. And if adolescence weren't enough of a burden, May must also contend with a big dose of familial angst. Her mother, Lucy, runs a none-too-successful guesthouse on the English coast. Young and single, she spends more time gossiping and party hopping than tending to May and brother Eden. This distracted maternal style has, alas, exposed our heroine to machinations of grown-up life, which she tracks with fascination and horror. Her single remaining pocket of naiveté involves her estranged father, whose return she eagerly anticipates--even after an unassuming writer begins to pay court to her swinging mom. But this dream, too, is crushed when the genuine item shows up: "This is what happens to hope: it gets smaller and smaller." By the Shore does contain some of the typical properties of a coming-of-age drama. But Craze, a first-time novelist and actress, writes with acute insight and sympathy, and she understands one of the great consolations of adolescence: that even the tiniest kernel of hope can be enough to generate almost boundless happiness.--Brangien Davis
Product Description
May lives in a former girls' school that her mother has turned into a guest house. May is 12 and she and her mother and brother have come to live by the sea. May observes the adults and their complicated games with an eye unmisted by sentimentality, and struggles to find solid ground for herself.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Now I remember... the dawning realisation that my parents were not invincible as I had previously thought... a desperate longing for stability and normality... paranoia and power struggles at school... THAT popular girl...the loss of those rose tinted spectacles of childhood that turns a potential toy into "Just a stick".
All the while, 12 year old May makes observations about the romantic relationship forming between her mother Lucy and mysterious writer Rufus. Although these observations often take the form of a passing comment, a single sentence, they say much, much more.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A great story about the life of a twelve year old girl who is the daughter of parents who no longer live in the traditional fashion (as in married-for-life). Instead, her parents have complicated relationships and this is a book about how she views those relationships and the impact on her. Well written and beautifully told.
Format:Paperback
A near perfect coming of age story, set in the countryside after Lucy moves with 12 year-old May and her younger brother Eden following her second failed relationship (the children have different fathers). Lucy has bought a boarding house near the sea where she rents out rooms in the summer and tries to survive in the winter. May misses her father, who used to turn up now and again when they lived in London. Then Rufus takes a room late in the autumn - he's a writer and wants the solitude. May is intrigued by his relationship with Patricia who says she is his girlfriend but is more or less sent packing. When Lucy and Rufus become a little more than friendly, the manipulative Patricia comes back - along with Lucy's wealthy friend Annabel and - much to May's delight, Simon, her father. The delight doesn't last, as May finds out that blood relationships are not guaranteed to bring happiness.
This is a gentle but oddly compelling novel, with May's school life and home life unwrapped before us like a gift.
This is a gentle but oddly compelling novel, with May's school life and home life unwrapped before us like a gift.
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