The Orchard on Fire by Shena Mackay

The Orchard on Fire by Shena Mackay

Many regard this as Mackay's masterpiece. A touching, funny novel about childhood in the 1950s: friendship, village life and lost innocence.

So touched with magic, so achingly sad and funny that my breath was taken away. . wonderful * The Times *
An extremely beautiful and funny novel . . . The Orchard on Fire is probably Mackay's most perfect book, produced with a technical adroitness and shapeliness which one can only envy * Guardian *
A harvest festival of sensuous detail, intimate, rich . . . Compulsively readable * Daily Telegraph *
Shena Mackay is a writer in prime: at the height of her powers . . . Her prose is flawlessly seductive and comic, confidently witty and sensual * Independent on Sunday *
Wholly delightful . . . Shena Mackay is an assured artist -- A. N. Wilson * Evening Standard *
A celebration of childhood as well as a mourning for the loss of innocence . . . a bitter-sweet, gentle novel, not given to grandstanding or preaching, but shot through with humour and compassion. Her writing brilliantly captures the spirit of the place, where every present sensation has ghostly overtones that make the experience all the more sad and lovely * Times Literary Supplement *
An eloquent, beautifully written, unpretentious novel about a Fifties childhood . . . Mackay moved this reader to tears, not from grief but from joy. Now there's a skill * Mail on Sunday *
Totally authentic, agonisingly nostalgic, this poignant everyday story of Fifties folk has the power to lay bare everyone's susceptibility to the ghosts that forever teem around the scenes of our childhood * Daily Mail *
Shena Mackay has brought off something quite rare . . . the author has set out a rite of passage which will leave few readers unaffected * Spectator *

Shena Mackay was born in Edinburgh in 1944. Her writing career began when she won a prize for a poem written when she was fourteen. Two novellas, Dust Falls on Eugene Schlumberger and Toddler on the Run were published before she was twenty. Redhill Rococo won the 1987 Fawcett Prize, Dunedin won a 1994 Scottish Arts Council Book Award, The Orchard on Fire was shortlisted for the 1996 Booker Prize and, in 2003, Heligoland was shortlisted for both the Orange Prize and Whitbread Novel Award. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in Southampton.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780349007212
ISBN 10	0349007217
Title	The Orchard on Fire
Author	Shena Mackay
Series	Virago Modern Classics
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Little, Brown Book Group
Year published	2016-04-07
Number of pages	272
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.