In the Place of Fallen Leaves: A Novel - Softcover

Pears, Tim

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1556114729 ISBN 13: 9781556114724

Publisher: Penguin Group USA, 1996

Synopsis

A Devon village during the hot, dry days of a devastating 1984 summer drought forms the backdrop to the story of thirteen-year-old Alison, youngest child of prosperous farmers, her family, and her friendship with the son of a local viscount. Winner of the 1994 Hawthornden Prize for Literature. 15,000 first printing.

About this title

Review:

'Highly atmospheric ... It had an intoxicating, magical quality which completely beguiled me' Jeremy Paxman, Independent 'Constantly delightful and constantly surprising ... This novel is something completely new and exciting ... Comic and wry and elegiac and shrewd and thoughtful all at once. Please read it' A. S. Byatt 'The writing is so genuine. Nothing is posturing or romanticised. The characters really touched me. There's so much talent here' Barbara Trapido 'A remarkable first novel, which renders domestic detail fascinating and makes it quite possible to believe in magic' Sunday Times

From the Publisher:

reviews
WINNER OF THE HAWTHORNDEN PRIZE AND THE RUTH HADDEN AWARD

'Constantly delightful and constantly surprising...This novel is something completely new and exciting...Comic and wry and elegiac and shrewd and thoughtful all at once. Please read it' A.S. BYATT, Daily Telegraph

'The writing is so genuine. Nothing is posturing or romanticised. The characters really touched me. There's so much talent here' BARBARA TRAPIDO

'Reminiscent of Faulkner and Garcia Marquez, the writing retains a very English scale...A triumph...Sensitive, heart-warming and hallucinatory' MAX RODENBECK, Financial Times

'It is most beautifully written, hypnotic as Proust, very funny and full of love that doesn't cloy...It is a dreamy, easy, wonderful read - and quite remarkable for a first novel' JANE GARDAM

'A remarkable first novel, which renders domestic detail fascinating and makes it quite possible to believe in magic' Sunday Times

'Highly atmospheric...It had an intoxicating, magical quality which completely beguiled me' JEREMY PAXMAN, Independent

'By turns elegiac, moving and extremely funny, Pears is also unafraid to muscle up his formidable powers of Proustian evocation. An extraordinarily promising debut' Time Out

'Long in abeyance, the English rural novel flourishes again in Tim Pears' story of a 13-year-old Devon farmgirl's confrontation with sex, death and the weather... an unusually welll-made novel which, through being less English than one would expect, produces a very English kind of magic' GILES FODEN, Independent on Sunday

'It is tricky coming across a novel you want to praise to the skies. Cool dispassionate criticism is much safer. But Tim Pears' "In The Place of Fallen Leaves" is more perfect than any first novel deserves to be' JENNIFER SELWAY, Observer

'An engaging, well-written and original novel. Pears could write about doing the washing up and make it interesting' PHILIP HENSHER, Guardian

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Group USA
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 1556114729
• ISBN 13: 9781556114724
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback