The Wonder - Hardcover

Evans, Diana

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0701177977 ISBN 13: 9780701177973

Publisher: Chatto & Windus, 2009

Synopsis

As a child Lucas assumed that all children who'd lost their parents lived on water. Now a restless young man, and still sharing the West London narrowboat with his down-to-earth sister Denise, he secretly investigates the contents of an old wardrobe, in which he finds relics from the Midnight Ballet, an influential dance company of the 1960s founded by his Jamaican father, the charismatic Antoney Matheus.

In his search to unravel the legacy of the Midnight Ballet, Lucas comes into contact with people who were drawn towards Antoney's bright and dangerous star. He hears of hothouse rehearsals in an abandoned Notting Hill church, of artistic battles and personal betrayals, and a whirlwind European tour. Most importantly, Lucas learns about Antoney's passionate and tumultuous relationship with Carla, Lucas's mother, and the events that led to his father's final disappearance.

Vividly conjuring the world of 1950s Kingston, Jamaica, the Blues parties and early carnivals of Ladbroke Grove, the flower stalls and vinyl riflers of modern-day Portobello Road, and the famous leap and fall of Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, Diana Evans creates a haunting and visceral family mystery about absence and inheritance, the battle between love and creativity, and what drives a young man to take flight...

About this title

Product Description:

Rare Book

Review:

`The most dazzling depiction of the world of dance since Ballet Shoes' --The Times

`Evans interweaves the strands of her three-generation narrative with an exhilarating sense of place and period' --Daily Telegraph

`The Wonder embraces its theme with great heart. It's hard not to be seduced by its talented, difficult hero' --Finacial Times

`bedazzling...the alluring fairytale quality of her story. Hauntingly good' --Daily Mail

`fuelled by mystery at its heart, and by felicitous description...is delicacy and power in which Evans depicts emotional disturbance'
--The Guardian

`sparkles with mood, music and the sway of street life' --Marie Claire

'The author's passion burns on the page, along with an almost tactile relish of the act of writing itself' --Scotsman

`Evans...writes with eye-catching fluidity, gracefully pirouetting between Notting Hill in the 1990s, and the Caribbean a decade earlier.' --The Sunday Times

"...like the movement of the dancers it describes, it feels always, captivatingly, `meant'" --Times Literary Supplement

`Evans...writes with eye-catching fluidity, gracefully pirouetting between Notting Hill in the 1990s, and the Caribbean a decade earlier.' --The Sunday Times

About this edition

• Publisher: Chatto & Windus
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 0701177977
• ISBN 13: 9780701177973
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320