Stanley Middleton3.5 The Booker Prize-winning novel from 'the Chekhov of suburbia', Stanley Middleton. Rejacketed and republished by Windmill for the anniversary of its 1974 win. Edwin Fisher has fled to a seaside resort of his childhood past to try to come to terms with the death of his baby son and the collapse of his marriage to Meg. On this strange and lonely holiday, as he seeks to understand what went wrong, Edwin must find somea way to think about what he has been and decide upon where he can go next. 'At first glance, or even at second, Stanley Middleton's world is easily recognizable... The excellence of art, for Middleton, is an exact vision of real things as they are. And because he is himself so exact an observer, his world at third glance can seem strange and disturbing or newly and brilliantly lit with colour.' A.S. Byatt ‘We need Stanley Middleton to remind us what the novel is about. Holiday is vintage Middleton… One has to look at nineteenth-century writing for comparable storytelling.’ Sunday Times
Nadine Gordimer3.9 Mehring is rich. He has all the privileges and possessions that South Africa has to offer, but his possessions refuse to remain objects. His wife, son, and mistress leave him; his foreman and workers become increasingly indifferent to his stewardship; even the land rises up, as drought, then flood, destroy his farm.
Kingsley Amis0.0 At Tuppenny-hapenny Cottage in the English countryside, five elderly people live together in rancorous disharmony. Adela Bastable bosses the house, as her brother Bernard passes his days thinking up malicious schemes against the baby-talking Marigold and secret drinker Shorty, while kindly George lies bedridden upstairs.
Beryl Bainbridge4.2 The basics-only, going nowhere lives of Freda and scruffy Brenda, the only two English women in a London bottle factory full of Italian immigrants, are shattered during a Sunday picnic.
C.P. Snow3.0 Economic storm clouds gather as bad political weather is forecast for the nation. Three elderly peers look on from the sidelines of the House of Lords and wonder if it will mean the end of a certain way of life. Against this background is set a court struggle over a disputed will that escalates into an almighty battle.
