- Hardcover: 256 pages
- Publisher: Atria Books; First Printing edition (16 Jun 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0743463420
- ISBN-13: 978-0743463423
- Product Dimensions: 24.2 x 16.8 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,978,540 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
The Facts of Life
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
A remarkable young boy, Frank Arthur Vine, the product of a passionate encounter between his mother Cassie and an American G.I., is brought up by his mother's six very different--and idiosyncratic--sisters and his charismatic grandmother after his mother is determined to be too unstable, in a emotio
About the Author
Graham Joyce was born into a Coventry mining family and now lives in Leicester. In addition to writing he teaches a Creative Writing course at Nottingham University.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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First Sentence
If she's not here, thinks Cassie, if she's not coming. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
If she's not here, thinks Cassie, if she's not coming. Read the first page
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Deep Joy!,
By Rikki K (London) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Facts of Life (Gollancz S.F.) (Hardcover)
This beautiful writer gets better and better...I cant describe how this book works its magic. Its funny and dark in turns but it was easily the best book I've read in the last ten years. There are so many beautiful characters in this but more importantly you get the preciousness of life, the humour of life, the madness of family life. I have read Graham Joyce before and all very good to but this is on a different plane. Every page was a deep joy for me and I started reading it slowly as I got to the end because I didn't want it to end.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Masterpiece!,
This review is from: The Facts of Life (Gollancz S.F.) (Hardcover)
A psychic matriarch, seven daughters and one magical boy hold center stage in Graham Joyce's latest novel, The Facts of Life, a work situated comfortably somewhere between the best mainstream fiction and the subtlest works of fantasy. Be it magical realism or literary horror, the key ingredients here, as with all of Joyce's works, are characters you can reach out and touch. And they touch you right back.Set in during and post-WWII Coventry, England, the novel opens with "wayward ... fey" Cassie Vine and the bundle in her arms, Frank, whom she fails to give away to a prospective foster mother. Returning home to her mother, Martha and her six sisters, Cassie triggers a discussion that will set the tone and struggle for the rest of the novel. As Cassie herself "is the last girl on Earth fit to raise a child," Martha and her daughters agree that Frank should be raised by the entire clan. Passed from Martha and Aunt Beatie Vine's own care to Aunt Una and Uncle Tom's farm, to his twin aunts Evelyn and Ina, it becomes clear that Frank is special and possessed of special abilities. Here at the farm, young Frank discovers the Man-Behind-The-Glass, a mysterious figure trapped in the Earth, constantly demanding that Frank bring him things. Meanwhile, the secret of Frank's conception remains with Cassie, buried deep in the night that German bombers circled over Coventry dropping incendiary and explosive payloads until most of the city was leveled. Cassie, who is regularly possessed of "blue" periods during which she tends to wander far, must often leave Frank in the care of his more stable relatives, transferring him from household-to-household, including an experimental commune and a house with an active mortuary parlor in the back. From each he takes away a lesson about life. Through it all, Martha watches, patiently directing Franks care from place-to-place, occasionally visited at the front door by precognitive apparitions that help her pave the way. Though a quiet work, The Facts of Life is no less gripping than Joyce's more conventional work in novels like Requiem and The Tooth Fairy. It's gently graceful characters and precise language makes this alternately horrific and humorous work a treasure whose pages will have slipped through the reader's fingers far too quickly.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A beautiful thing,
By
This review is from: The Facts of Life (Paperback)
As another reviewer put it, this truly is a book to savour. One could, for instance, suitably chew on Godiva chocolate as the characters muse, sometimes hilariously, on Coventry's famed Lady Godiva.
I am enjoying re-reading it now, a year after I first encountered its truly alive Vine family. I find myself pausing at the end of lines wondering, "Just how did Graham Joyce do this?" He certainly has ears that hear all, and the dialogue seems like the people of Coventry actually speaking to us. It is all a terrific accomplishment that will make you an instant fan of his.
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