Mr Mac and Me - Softcover

Freud, Esther

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1408857219 ISBN 13: 9781408857212

Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks, 2015

Synopsis

Thomas Maggs, the son of the local publican, lives with his parents and sister in a village on the Suffolk coast in 1914. He is the youngest child, and the only son surviving. Life is quiet ? shaped by the seasons, fishing and farming and the summer visitors. Then one day a mysterious Scotsman arrives. To Thomas he looks for all the world like a detective, in his black cape and hat of felted wool, and the way he puffs on his pipe as if he's Sherlock Holmes. Mac is what the locals call him when they whisper about him in the inn. And whisper they do, for he sets off on his walks at unlikely hours, and stops to examine the humblest flowers. He is seen on the beach, staring out across the waves as if he's searching for clues. But Mac isn't a detective, he's the architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and together with his red-haired artist wife, they soon become a source of fascination and wonder to Thomas. Yet just as Thomas and Mac's friendship begins to blossom, war with Germany is declared. The summer guests flee and are replaced by regiments of soldiers on their way to Belgium, and as the brutality of war weighs increasingly heavily on this coastal community, they become more suspicious of Mac and his curious behaviour... In this tender and compelling story of an unlikely friendship, Esther Freud paints a vivid portrait of a home front community during the First World War, and of a man who was one of the most brilliant and misunderstood artists of his generation. This paperback book has 293 pages and measures: 19.7 x 12.7 x 2cm.

About this title

Review:

A compelling tale beautifully told, Mr Mac & Me is as close to a perfect novel as anything I've read in a long time. I loved every page of it (Ann Patchett, author of Bel Canto)

I was utterly absorbed in the language and the story and the world of it ... You know how it is when a writer draws into a place and you begin to feel it is more substantial than the one around you? That is how this book was for me. I truly loved it (Rachel Joyce, author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry)

'I loved and admired Mr Mac and Me more than I can say' (Francis Wyndham)

Attending to Esther Freud's still, truthful voice becomes not only a pleasure but a necessity (Jonathan Coe)

Freud has a precious and remarkable gift (The Times)

A superbly gifted writer (New York Times Book Review)

The best that art can be: full of exploration, full of intuition, full of generosity - and full of love (Julie Myerson)

Book Description:

Set on the Suffolk coastline in 1914, a compelling story of an unlikely friendship from the Granta Best of Young British author of Hideous Kinky and The Sea House

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1408857219
• ISBN 13: 9781408857212
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304