- Paperback: 192 pages
- Publisher: Vintage; New Ed edition (29 April 1999)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 009927387X
- ISBN-13: 978-0099273875
- Product Dimensions: 12.9 x 1.2 x 19.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 433,360 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
Based on fact, but told with the imagination of a novelist, STRANGERS is the story of the author's family, the Tennants. Margot Asquith and Pamela Tennant (nee Wyndham), warring sisters-in-law; Pamela's children, her 'jewels' - Clare the wilful beauty, Stephen Tennant the outrageous aesthete, David the nightclub king, and the steady, sensible Christopher who becomes head of the family when the eldest brother Bim dies on the Somme - these are some of the characters brought to sudden and not always respectable life in this funny, touching and sometimes shocking novel. Their antics, dreams and grief are witnessed by the maid Louisa, and played out chiefly at Glen, the castle in the border of Scotland, where the young narrator pulls from long-sealed cupboards the stories of her family's past. But as the secrets emerge the myth woven around the glamorous figures of the past is both enhanced and dispelled. Haunting and compelling, STRANGERS presents a family and its young detective in a startling light.
From the Back Cover
'A brilliant book about the extraordinary and eccentric Tennant family' Antonia Fraser
'In this kindly but honest tribute to her family, Emma Tennant finds "the words for what had taken so long to forget and now takes an age to remember". Polite when disparaging and reserved when loving, it is impossible not to be charmed by the author...Strangers is her funny, elegant commentary on the combined power and irrelevance of our ancestors and the spells they cast' The Times
'Tennant's book is neither history nor analysis, but an evocation of a complex inheritance, "with its dead rumours and incontrovertible facts". She sifts through these with a supple, imaginative empathy and the skill of a practised novelist' Sunday Times
'A dreamy romantic read, a fabulous conjuring up of an aristocratic world...The book is full of charm, as you would expect from this accomplished and delicate novelist, and of brilliant and startling incidents...Vivid and often affecting...The book is full of such truthful recreation of past moments, both remote and near' Mail on Sunday
'Fascinating...This is an insider story about "the strange yet known monsters who are my family". It is written with huge sensitivity...Tennant wonderfully describes the mysterious mores of the upper class' Oldie
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First Sentence
Here they are, in the inevitable photograph. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
Here they are, in the inevitable photograph. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
A wonderful family history which requires clever reading and a desire to use one's imagination to fill in the gaps. A wonderful family who are anything but normal but who wants to read normal. The scandal adds to the beautiful way the author gets inside the minds of relatives she never knew.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Deftly mixes family history, childhood memories and comedy of manners. The writing is sophisticated, evocative and frequently poetic. Couldn't recommend it more.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Emma Tennant's Strangers is a boring piece of vanity publishing made worse by Vintage/Random House's editing and book production - the worst I have ever encountered. I gave up the agony of trying to read it. Vacuous writing aside, the text contains sloppy editing, for example in the use or non-use of appropriate punctuation; there is a terrible typesetting problem throughout whereby letters are typed on top of each other leaving the reader to guess the intended word; the photographs are very poorly produced on the same paper as the text, rather than glossy paper - in one photograph I had no idea of the gender of the subject, until I read the caption `Stephen Tennant' (unless of course he really does look like a bloated androgyne). The book opens with the text `Here they are, in the inevitable photograph.' And then goes on to direct the reader to the various characters in the photograph. Pity the publishers didn't include the photograph as was obviously intended by the author. Strangers: A Family Romance
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