- Hardcover: 282 pages
- Publisher: Fig Tree Press Brighton; 1st Edition edition (1 May 2006)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0954682726
- ISBN-13: 978-0954682729
- Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 13.2 x 2.6 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,003,137 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Visit the Amazon.co.uk Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
About the Author
Nell Grey has published two novels – Solitary Pleasures and The Golden Web – as well as poems, short stories, articles and reviews, both online and in magazines (mostly small but perfectly formed). She has a passion for the natural world, archaic mystery, myth and legend and those places where fact and fiction cross and mingle. Most of her stories ferment and distill whilst walking with her dog on the South Downs. She is a resident site expert on the writers’ website WriteWords.
Excerpted from Three Magic Women by Grey Nell. Copyright © 2006. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The black BMW passes through the gates and round the curve of unkempt grass to stop by the steps. Sunlight filters through the tall beeches on the western side of the house, behind the small tower, patterning the bonnet and roof with shifting shapes, lending the brief illusion that the car is underwater. A pause, then the driver, a grey-haired man in a dark suit, gets out and walks around to open the passenger’s side but the woman already has one foot on the gravel drive. He stands loosely to attention, holding the door open for her.
‘Thank you Mr Stacey – sorry – Phillip.’
‘It’s all right. Are you sure you’re ready for this?’
‘Let’s get it over and done with.’
He feels in his pocket and holds up a key, but she shakes her head.
‘Will you do it? I’m not used to keys yet.’
He nods and goes before her up the three steps. The great oak door creaks onto a panelled hall, bare of furniture but with a fireplace on one side. Phillip Stacey steps onto the polished floorboards but the woman hesitates before wrapping her jacket to cross tightly at the front, covering her mouth with her left hand and following him inside.
‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ he says, turning to stop and touch her shoulder. ‘We can do this another time if you’d rather.’
She drops the hand to her chest to grip the lapels together and runs the other through her white hair.
‘Would you mind if I looked around the old place on my own? I’ll try not to be too long.’
‘Take all the time you want. When you’ve seen the house we can have a walk in the gardens,’ he says. Then, seeing her glance at the small door half-hidden by shadow in the corner of the hall: ‘It’s all open inside so you should be able to have a good look around. I’ll be in the garden if you need me.’
Alone in the empty space minutes pass as she gazes at his footprints on the dusty floor before stirring herself to follow their tracks to the kitchen.
She has seen nearly all of it now. A line runs around the house where she trailed a finger through the dust: along the worktop of the huge dresser that still covers one wall in the kitchen; over the old black range, the scrubbed pine table and alongside her footprints on the red quarry tiles, as if a small snake had kept her company. Across the long table in the refectory with sunlight warming the motes to sparkle and dance in sad welcome. Over the panels in the sitting room with Phillip Stacey just visible through the French windows, studying an old-fashioned damask rose in the flowerbed. The furniture has nearly all gone, the floor is bare of rugs – she supposes her father must have sold them. Then up the oak stairs, her shoes echoing in the emptiness, the line continuing along the banister, the panelling, through empty rooms, until she opens the door on a spacious bedroom with a glimpse of bathroom beyond. She shuts the door quickly and runs back downstairs to the hall. She looks again at the small door in the corner, wipes her hands on her trousers and crosses the floor.
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Strange and magical,
This review is from: Three Magic Women (Hardcover)
The prologue of Three Magic Women allows the reader a glimpse of Ellie, the main character from The Golden Web, at the beginning of a new life and needing some purpose and direction. These arrive somewhat disguised in the form of her grandmother's letters. Chapter one rolls back the years, and the whole of Part 1 is told by way of the same letters written by Una to her own mother at the age of sixteen, when she was starting married life in The Old Priory, Ellie's childhood home where half of The Golden Web takes place. The letters reveal Una as a strange damaged creature, given to violent passions and imaginings. In Part 2 the novel reverts to where the prologue left off, with Ellie, confused and vaguely troubled, not only by the content of the letters but also by the happenings in the house she shares with others like herself. Somehow she must pick up the threads of normality and learn to live in the real world.
The first part of Three Magic Women is as strange as Una herself. One can't help asking questions about madness, where and how it begins and how broad the cusp of sanity and insanity is. Una's story is punctuated and paralleled (in an odd and non-literal way), by verses from Edmund Spenser's epic poem The Faerie Queene, which seems in some way as mysterious and multi-layered as Una herself. Part 2 takes place in the present day and is written in a completely different way. Una's voice has gone, to be replaced with a straightforward third person narrative. Events escalate as Ellie attempts to find herself, until the wonderfully lyrical end which will stay with me.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
