The Independent on Sunday, July 1990
A wonderfully snotty heroine...written with vim and vitriol.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Cosmopolitan, July 1990
An accomplished and compulsively readable comedy of manners
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Time Out, July 1990
Interesting ideas and a witty talent for perceptive characterisation
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Publishing News June 1990
Exciting, enchanting, life-enhancing first novel.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Book Choice, July 1990
Told with great choice in vigorous, shapely prose...a real pleasure to read
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
Emma Kenward is 18, loathes England and her upper class family and longs to be an artist in romantic Italy. She moves to Tuscany and stays with her American friend and role-model Sylvia. Through Sylvia she meets many people including Lucio, with whom she embarks on her first passionate affair.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From the Author
Foreign Bodies was published in 1990 and was immediately savaged by the national press. It tells the story of a young girl who goes to live in Italy during her "gap year" before university, and unwittingly becomes embroiled in a murder, as well as her first love-affair. Conflating the Bildungsroman, or novel about growing up, with a detective story seemed to me an interesting thing to do, but few critics stepped back to look at it that way. What they objected to was the voice I had given my heroine. She was the opposite of the self-deprecatory, timid, chaste girls women were suposed to be writing about - and women reviewers, particularly those of an older generation, really hated her, and failed to see that she was in fact a comic creation. I was also portraying the life of an Italian hill-town from the inside, with all it's feuds and meannnesses rather than the EM Forster picture the British prefer. You can read more about Foreign Bodies on my website, but its reception did inspire several passages in A Vicious Circle, my satire on literary London.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
About the Author
Amanda Craig was born in 1959. She is married, with two children, lives in London and reviews widely.
