Published by Vintage, part of Vintage Publishing
Format: Paperback
£8.99
Author:
D J Taylor
Format: Paperback
EAN: 9780099531982
£8.99
Available for dispatch within 1-2 working days
EAN: 9780099531982
Published: 1 Apr 2010
Glamorous Alice Keach is one of 1930s London's foremost hostesses. Despite humble American origins, she has secured her place in high society through marriage to one of England's wealthiest bachelors.
But Alice has a secret. Its roots run years back, and miles away, to the dust-blasted prairies of Kansas. It corncerns a lost little boy left under the haphazard guidance of an eccentric uncle. Now, a visit from America looks set to blow apart Alice's glittering pre-eminence forever.
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A gripping page-turner filled with surprises, shocks and deep psychological insight... Intelligent, absorbing and most enjoyable
- Independent on Sunday
Utterly gripping reading... You are in for a treat
- Literary Review
DJ Taylor creates characters who have dynamic spirit and capture the imagination, while the story has the tension of a thriller, the sensitivity of a romance and the wit of an idiosyncratic adventure
- Easy Living
Ambitious and immensely accomplished ... above all a meditation on selfhood and memory
- Guardian
A highly accomplished novel. It is engrossingly plotted, and its depiction of the vibrant decade leading to the 1929 Crash offers an interesting parallel to our own times
- Mail on Sunday
Intelligent, absorbing and most enjoyable
- Independent on Sunday
Excellent ... the impenetrable, imperturbable Alice compels
- Daily Mail
Carefully constructed sets and a convincing commentary on social change
- Spectator
mesmerising novel paints pictures of many different worlds in the early 20th century...busting with detail... captivating
- Books Quarterly
When on song, which he often is here, Taylor is a felicitous, intelligent writer. He sets a scene with admirable clarity, peoples it with memorable characters, and offers a plot that will keep most readers hooked and satisfied for nigh on 350 pages. These days this is rarer than you might think
- The Herald
D J Taylor is remarkably under-appreciated as a novelist.
- Telegraph
This special piece of period realism is very far indeed from being either silly or dull.
- Independent
Taylor is excellent on the 'incidentals' - arresting tableaux abound - and the impenetrable, imperturbable Alice compels.
- Daily Mail
A plot of Victorian complexity handled with great skill
- The Scotsman Books of the Year
D.J. Taylor was born in Norwich in 1960. He is a novelist, critic and acclaimed biographer, whose biography of Thackeray was a critically-acclaimed success and whose Orwell: The Life won the Whitbread Biography prize in 2003. His most recent books are Kept: A Victorian Mystery (a Publishers Weekly Book of the Year) and Derby Day: A Victorian Mystery. He is also the author of Bright Young People: The Rise and Fall of a Generation 1918-1940, and the novel At the Chime of a City Clock.
