- Paperback: 368 pages
- Publisher: Penguin (2 Mar 2006)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0141012439
- ISBN-13: 978-0141012438
- Product Dimensions: 19.2 x 12.8 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 921,180 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Sylvia longs for a baby. After two miscarriages and years of IVF treatment, she is obsessed with finding a cure for her infertility.
On the brink of a nervous breakdown, she abandons her hospital job and buys a derelict cottage on the Greek island of Crete. Here, in the clean air and sparkling sea of the Aegean, she sets about purifying her body, convinced that this will help her conceive.
But hypnotised by the heat and beauty of the island, Sylvia's desire for a baby is gradually eclipsed by a new obsession: to find out more about Martin, the troubled young expatriate builder she hires to help renovate the cottage.
Where does he vanish to each night? Why does he keep his mother's ashes in his red campervan? And why won't he talk about how she died?
Debbie Taylor has written a sensual, disturbing and beautifully-crafted novel: about desire and loss and the healing warmth of the Mediterranean sun.
About the Author
Debbie Taylor is editor of Mslexia, the fastest-growing literary magazine in the UK. She has been writing and travelling ever since she abandoned her career as a research psychologist. She has worked as editor of New Internationalist magazine, and has co-edited The Virago Book of Writing for Women. Her non-fiction book, My Children My Gold (Virago), was shortlisted for the Fawcett Prize for women's writing. She lives with her partner and daughter in a disused lighthouse at the mouth of the River Tyne. Her novel The Fourth Queen is published by Penguin.
Inside This Book
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First Sentence
Martin's mother told him that horses got pregnant by standing with their tails raised and their rumps to the wind. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
Martin's mother told him that horses got pregnant by standing with their tails raised and their rumps to the wind. Read the first page Browse Sample Pages
Front Cover | Copyright | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A sensual and compelling read!,
By Bookworm (Kent, England) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Hungry Ghosts (Paperback)
I was totally immersed in these characters for the couple of days it took me to read this book! Its main themes cover topics many people find difficult to understand - mental illness and infertility - but if you have no personal experience of either, you will come away feeling a little better informed as to how it feels to live with these challenges. It is a very sensual read (full of visual and olfactory images)and a complicated love story (the eternal quadrangle - wife,husband,wife's best friend, wife's builder!) but it is also quite shocking and I found it, in parts, quite uncomfortable to read. If this all sounds a little depressing - please let me assure you it's not, but I would have liked a more definite conclusion to their story. I don't like making up my own endings! All in all a very good read.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Compelling, startling and very enjoyable,
By A Customer
This review is from: Hungry Ghosts (Paperback)
When I finished reading it over a weekend I was fizzing with thoughts. The characters are damaged, but very real and likable and I found myself compelled to read more, wanting to know them better.Infertility, mental illness and family breakdowns are some of the grittier issues in the book but it certainly isn't a dreary read because the writing is pacy and accessible. I found the ending slightly too open and inconclusive but that's because it's one of those books that you don't want to end.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Haunted by Hungry Ghosts,
By
This review is from: Hungry Ghosts (Paperback)
From the opening page, Debbie Taylor draws the reader into the strange and compelling worlds of Martin and Sylvia, gradually weaving the threads of their lives into the same exquisite, disquieting tapestry.
Exploring the age old themes of passion, betrayal and loss, Taylor's lyrical prose exposes the characters' most primal desires with a subtly original hand. Her treatment of the subjects is so sympathetic that although I was at times disturbed by what was revealed, my empathy with the characters was unshakeable. A book so rich and complex, I have continued to relive and savour it, since coming to the end. It's gone straight into my top five all-time favourites.
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