Review
'This gripping and moving story is an honest chronicle of what happens to relationships over time, and a sharp observation of one woman's emotional life' The Times 'A perceptive and delicately written study of human relations and motivations, painful, funny and fresh, which Cobbold has structured quite ingeniously, building the story layer upon layer, rather like a painting.' Observer 'This moving tale of love lost and found centres on Grace, who by 18 has been orphaned ... this poignant novel is a reminder of how we look for love in all the wrong places' Hello
Product Description
By the time Grace is eighteen, she has been orphaned, moved countries and lost touch with her only brother. Talented, awkward and a little fierce, she can't help thinking that she's managed to lose anything she's ever loved. So she decides to revisit her past in America, and she's brought her camera - she's going to catch these memories and pin them down to keep. What she isn't expecting that summer in New Hampshire is to meet the love of her life. Some years later, now divorced and flourishing as a controversial photographer, Grace lives alone - she likes the fact that everything will be exactly where she left it. Until Grace finds that she is, quite literally, being haunted by the past...
From the Publisher
Fans of Maggie O’Farrell and Sally Vickers will adore ‘Shooting Butterflies’
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From the Author
I was out walking in the country one summer day when I came upon a large heap of horse manure on the path in front of me. I was about to step round, nose wrinkled, eyes averted but I paused instead, transfixed by the sight of a beautiful orange and gold butterfly, its wings fluttering as it clung onto the heap of manure. That, I thought, just about sums up life.
I’ve been told by some people that Shooting Butterflies is a dark novel but I think it’s about hope. We often hear of how tragedy may lurk behind a glittering façade. Well, Grace, my main protagonist claims that sometimes a perfectly good life might be hiding behind a tragic façade. Grace is a photographer. She knows all about the difference an angle, a sliver of light, can make to the picture.
Bad things happen to Grace - bad things happen, that’s life. But in most aspects of her life, Grace has choices. Having choices is something that we might take for granted but for women of previous generations it was all too often an unachievable luxury, as Grace realises through her developing friendship with ninety-year-old Louisa. Louisa Blackstaff; batty ghost and forgotten wife of a great man.
To me, humour is the saving grace of mankind and Grace is funny. I know I wrote her, but she really is quite funny. Like many authors I am constantly frustrated by the gulf between that which I dream of writing and that which I actually manage, poor frail mortal that I am, to produce. But in Shooting Butterflies I think I have written rather a good novel. (I know that in English people don’t boast but I’m Swedish so I’m allowed.) So, if you read it, I very much hope you’ll feel that doing so was a good use of precious time.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
About the Author
Marika Cobbold was born in Sweden and is the author of four novels. Guppies for Tea, selected for the WHSmith First Novels Promotion and shortlisted for the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award; The Purveyor of Enchantment; A Rival Creation and Frozen Music. Marika Cobbold lives in London.
