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Rose Tremain was born in 1943 in London. She was educated at the
Sorbonne, Paris and at the University of East Anglia, where she
went on to teach creative writing from 1988-95. Her publications
include novels and short-story collections, and she is also the
author of a number of radio and television plays, including Temporary
Shelter, which won a Giles Cooper Award. Her novels have won many
prizes including the Whitbread Novel of the Year (Music and Silence);
the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the Prix Femina Etranger
(Sacred Country); the Sunday Express Book of the Year, the Angel
Literary Award and shortlisted for the Booker Prize (Restoration).
 The
Darkness of Wallis Simpson
With her short story The Colonel's Daughter winning the Dylan Thomas,
it's fair to say that Rose Tremain is a master of the tall tale.
This latest anthology doesn't disappoint. The title story focuses
around Wallis Simpson, the twice-divorced American woman for whom
Edward VIII abdicated in 1936, who died imprisoned by her lawyer
in her Paris flat. Written in the first person, the story gives
the reader a real sense of Simpson's increasing senility and selective
memory.
There are 11 other stories in this distinguished collection, focusing
around a variety of themes - a jilted man gets his revenge, a baby
grows wings, and a character in an impressionist painting escapes
from his frame.
'Written with the deft imagination we've come to know and love
from Rose Tremain' Good Housekeeping
'Moving and tragic...the darkness of Rose Tremain is never far
from the surface in this brilliantly written short story collection'
Lianne Kolirin, Express
If you liked She May not Leave by Fay Weldon, you'll love this!
 The
Colour
Joseph and Harriet Blackstone, along with Joseph's mother Lillian,
emigrate from England in search of new beginnings and prosperity
in New Zealand. But the harsh land near Christchurch where they
settle threatens to destroy them almost before they begin.
When Joseph finds gold in the creek, he guiltily hides the discovery
from his wife and mother and is seized by a rapturous obsession
with the voluptuous riches awaiting him deep in the earth. Abandoning
his farm and family, he sets off alone for the new gold-fields over
the Southern Alps, a moral wilderness where many others, under the
seductive dreams of 'the colour', are violently rushing to their
destinies.
Harriet bravely decides to pursue her own journey towards an uncertain
future. But nothing has prepared her for what happens when she too
arrives at the gold-diggings. Amid squalor and confusion, amid burning
heat and icy flood, she comes face to face with the true cost of
desire. Beautifully written, hauntingly evocative and by turns both
moving and terrifying, "The Colour" is the story of a
quest for the impossible, an attempt to mine the complexities of
love and in the process discover what it is that makes men and women
happy.
'Tremain has produced her own wondrous piece of gold' Scotsman
If you liked The Piano Tuner by Daniel Mason, you'll love this!
 The
Way I Found Her
Clearly influenced by her time at the Sorbonne, The Way I Found
Her is an adventure set in Paris, centring around an adolescent
boy's fixation with Valentina, a beautiful Russian author. One day,
Valentina goes missing, and 14-year-old Lewis sets out to unravel
the mystery of her disappearance.
Rose Tremain excels in her evocation of a Parisian summer, and one
gets a real feel for the sensual appreciation of food, a clear celebration
of the French food culture.
'So beautifully written, I was enthralled from page 1, and quickly
found myself in the heat of a Parisian summer, as a silent observer
of Lewis Little and his quirky, funny and occasionally worryingly
psychotic observations of life around him. A great read.' Amazon.co.uk
reader review
If you liked Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! By Fannie Flagg,
you'll love this!
 Music
& Silence
Told from a multitude of viewpoints, Music & Silence is the
darkly psychological tale of a superstitious and fearful King.
In the year 1629, a young English luteist named Peter Claire arrives
at the Danish Court to join King Christian IV's Royal Orchestra.
From the moment when he realises that the musicians have to perform
in a freezing cellar underneath the royal apartments, he understands
that he's come to a place where the opposing states of light and
dark, good and evil are waging war to the death.
This treasure house of delights, as haunting as it is pleasurable,
teems with characters, real and imagined; with intrigues, searches,
betrayals, in vivid scene after scene which loop in and out, back
and forth, like overlapping and repeated chords.
'The best thing from Denmark since Hamlet.' John Julius Norwich
If you liked The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier, you'll
love this!
 The
Swimming Pool Season
A light-hearted exploration of relationships, The Swimming Pool
Season switches between a collective portrait of Pomerac, a sleepy
French village with a cast of locals both endearing and intransigent,
to the more emotionally repressed Oxford associates of in-comers
Larry and Miriam Kendall.
After the collapse of 'Aquazure', his swimming pool construction
business, Larry and Miriam Kendall have exiled themselves to a sleepy
French village. When Miriam is summoned to her mother's deathbed
in Oxford, Larry begins to formulate a dazzling new idea: the creation
of the most beautiful, the most artistic swimming pool of all. Around
them, Rose Tremain weaves the intricate fabric of the lives of two
communities: Miriam's mother, Leni, clever, beautiful and arrogant.
Polish Nadia, tortured by the passions of her sad and guilty past.
Gervaise the peasant woman - content with her boisterous German
lover and confused husband. And the young tearaway Xavier, in love
with the virginal Agnes.
'Sharp, elegant, pure' Mail on Sunday
If you liked The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Monk Kidd, you'll
love this!
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