- Paperback: 320 pages
- Publisher: Headline (2 Aug 2001)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0747267367
- ISBN-13: 978-0747267362
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 12.6 x 2.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 403,750 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Observer
'The pages turn with ease'
Irish Sunday Independent
'Warm, and even at its darkest, never entirely black. An engrossing read'
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Exceptional First Novel,
This review is from: Retreat (Paperback)
This is an exceptional novel from a new writer who writes lovingly of her characters, sensitively of a taboo subject and hilariously of what convent girls get up to behind closed doors.This funny moving book is complexly but not complicatedly constructed , as it weaves backwards and forwards in the lives of five young girls who form livelong friendships at school without knowing quite how deep the bonds between them lie. The detail in the characterization of these five main figures draws us in so that we want to know more about the childhoods, the families, the cares of each of them. There is sweet Anna who lives in a world of her own consisting of French Revolutionary Heroes and the possibility of a dramatic seduction. There is warm observant Treasa who grows from the most adorable baby to appear in adult fiction to a calm solid woman - the friend we would all most like to have to lean on. There is sad lost Mary Olivier whose surname the nuns have changed to Oliver as her French background is too affected for an Irish convent school. There is smart imaginative Bernadette whose creativity extends to transforming the Lives of the Saints into the more readable Scrumptious Sex. And finally there is the bold Kitty whose skirts are too short and whose expression too impudent for her to last very long in any convent. The story moves from the opening scene when the girls, in their final year at school, attend the annual religious retreat back to each of their childhoods and then on to the present day and a denouement which leaves the reader turning the pages faster and faster. This is an author who deals with a difficult subject with the lightest of touches, who lightens a serious book with wit and with wisdom and whose future work her readers will await with great anticipation.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Retreat is a relevant book...,
By A Customer
This review is from: Retreat (Paperback)
As a 'survivor' of the system which Retreat deals with, I would like to recommend this book. It was a cruel regime and friends were the support that helped me through it. The authorites of that time have a lot to answer for, and I like the way the author leads the reader through the brutality and out the other side. She reminded me of the role of laughter in my childhood. Thank you.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Funny, poignant, evocative...,
By A Customer
This review is from: Retreat (Paperback)
I actually wondered if this was the school I went to - all the characters were there, even the nasty teacher of Irish, and the nuns who thought they were above you. It's about a time I'm glad is over, but I thoroughly enjoyed reading about it from a distance.
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