Amazon.co.uk Review
This intimate, intensely seen novel was short-listed for the 1996 Booker Prize. Shena Mackay's six previous novels have won her critical admiration and a popular audience in England, but her work has not received due recognition in the United States yet. The Orchard on Fire is a concise, domestic novel set in the village of Stonebridge, where the parents of April Harlency have come in 1953 to run the local teashop. April's private reveries and her entanglement with the grim family life of her best friend, Ruby Richards, fill up a vivid and dramatic year in the wonderfully distinctive life of Stonebridge.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
'A harvest festival of sensuous detail, intimate, rich... compulsively readable' -- "Daily Telegraph"
'So touched with magic, so achingly sad and funny that my breath was taken away... Wonderful' -- "The Times"
'Mackay moved this reader to ears, not from grief, but from joy. Now there's a skill' -- Fay Weldon," Mail on Sunday"
'So touched with magic, so achingly sad and funny that my breath was taken away... Wonderful' -- "The Times"
'Mackay moved this reader to ears, not from grief, but from joy. Now there's a skill' -- Fay Weldon," Mail on Sunday"
"From the Trade Paperback edition."
Book Description
KEY POINTS: * Shortlisted for the 1997 Booker Prize. * Hardback received ecstatic reviews and wide press profile coverage - a perfect platform from which to launch the paperback. * Beautiful new package. * Shena Mackay is a major voice in the British literary fiction. * A Minerva Lead paperback title. * Paperback will be supported by a massive publicity and marketing campaign. * Mackay backlist reverting to Minerva from Peguin.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Product Description
When April Harlency and her parents move from Streatham to The Copper Kettle Tearoom in Kent April's whole life changes. Through her eyes we witness her rite of passage from childhood to adolescence. With her best friend, the wonderfully exciting but dangerous Ruby, they discover an idyllic secret world in the orchard. However, their lives are permeated with a sense of menace which is mainly centred on Mr Greenidge who befriends April and involves her in a sinister and uncomfortable relationship that will eventually lead to trouble for all her family.
"From the Trade Paperback edition."
