In a story set in nineteenth-century New Zealand and modern London, Jack Mackenzie, a minister and amateur botanist, arrives in Dunedin, only to be expelled from New Zealand, an event that has profound repercussions for his present-day descendants.
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Review:
She writes like an angel wielding a scalpel, dissecting her characters with sublime, sharp-edged prose (Guardian)
Her prose is flawlessly seductive and comic, confidently witty and sensual (Julie Myerson Independent on Sunday)
She is a dazzling sort of a writer (Rachel Cooke)
Shena Mackay notices a London that passes most writers by . . . Her London is not a convenient backdrop - it is the capital itself, vividly and freshly set down in glancing detail (Paul Bailey Independent)
A rich feast to be enjoyed page by page as Mackay, in often dazzling prose, describes the hilarious antics of bibulous writers or, with moving lyricism, those 'surprised by joy' (Kirkus)
What a superbly imaginative writer she is ... Mackay takes large risks, but when they come off the result is breathtaking (John Banville)
An adroit novel that incisively but compassionately deploys a dysfunctional family with familiar problems - isolation, failed hopes, mutual deceit - in comic configurations (New York Times)
Book Description:
One of Shena Mackay's most acclaimed novels. A story of long consequences, betrayal, dark humour and redemption.
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