Set in the summer of 1955, Belfast serves as a backdrop for Brigid Arthur, a five-year-old girl, and her eleven-year-old brother, Francis. While the city appears tranquil, underlying tensions foreshadow future conflicts. As their seemingly idyllic summer unfolds, Brigid grapples with the complexities of adulthood, uncovering a blend of magical and painful truths about life. Ultimately, she and Francis embark on a journey of self-discovery, echoing the themes of hope and resilience found in the fairy tales they cherish.
This rewarding short fiction collection includes moving tales on the themes of sibling love and its vicissitudes. A child’s precocious contemplation of war in Ireland and war in Germany promotes a disturbance in the imaginative lonely boy. A woman’s playful New York adventure turns on a confrontation with external reality. A dramatic monologue from one of Jane Austen’s bitter relatives is directed at the famous female writer. A deceptive, subversive intelligence emerges beneath the lightness and simplicity of the stories in this dazzling volume.
The true story of the lives of Jane Austen's three nieces, their Pride and
Prejudice-style courtships, dramas and disappointments, and their move to
turbulent 19th century Ireland in a time of war and famine.
Ruth Deacon s academic career is in the doldrums, her marriage is in shreds, an elderly relative with dementia has become an impossible burden. Ruth needs a miracle. It comes in the form of The Memory Book . Edith Barratt, an elderly writer seeing out her last days in a nursing home, has decided to entrust a lifetime of writings to Ruth, to publish after her death. And, by also giving her the Memory Book, she breaks a lifetime of silence about a youthful love that has dominated her entire life. Ruth eagerly seizes on this material it could rescue her career. When she discovers that Edith s one-time love was an idealistic soldier of the Third Reich, she is even more encouraged. But then she finds herself faced with a challenge: that of exploring the gap between memory and desire, reality and illusion. Did Edith s young German truly love her? And what is the significance of a half-remembered melody sung by Fred Astaire? Starting in Belfast, moving through pre-war Berlin and returning to Ireland s tentative and fragile peace of 1995, Sophia Hillan s new novel traces a path to those things that cannot, in the end, be taken away.
