Children of Light [Paperback]

As with her successful debut SELFISH PEOPLE, Bristol based Lucy English’s second novel, set in Provence and Bath, features a bohemian heroine, and describes an ongoing rebellion within a family of each generation against the last.

Mireille is the daughter of architect Hugo Devereux and Vivienne, his beautiful immaculate Grace Kelly lookalike wife – a slave to convention where her daughter is bohemian, elegant where Mireille is messy. When Hugo embarks on a project in the South of France in the Sixties the family moves to Provence for a while and Mireille discovers La Ferrou at the end of a path through the woods, in a clearing – a massive split brooding rock beneath which is a magical pool, a natural basin in the rock.

Back in England, rebelling against Vivienne, Mireille becomes a hippy teenager and runs away, pregnant, with Gregor, her gypsy lover, to live in a hut by La Ferrou. But when, after five years, Gregor continues on to India to find his Guru and becomes a Child of Light, Mireille, penniless with their son Stephen to support, returns to England to introduce her wild little child to his conservative grandmother. However, Stephen finds an affinity with Vivienne that Mireille never had and rebels against his mother and her lovers, and her unconventional life on a houseboat in Bath.

Alone in a tiny stone hut in the south of France Mireille begins to write her life story. Largely ignored as a child by her fashionable parents, she was introduced to Provence when they bought a piece of land intending to transform it into a chic residence. Instead she found the hut and La Ferrou – a massive, brooding rock beneath which lies a magical pool.

Now, as spring turns to summer and the wild flowers begin to fade, Mireille confronts the series of tragedies related to her parents, her lovers and her child that have drawn her back to the strange magic of La Ferrou.

Lucy English was born in Sri Lanka, grew up in London, studied English and American literature at the University of East Anglia and has an MA in Creative Writing. She now has three children, works in a city farm in Bristol and is a performance poet. Children of Light is her second novel.