Close Your Eyes by Ewan Morrison

Close Your Eyes by Ewan Morrison

In 1981 a mother abandoned her child and drove into the night, never to return. Her disappearance was reported in the press as a fatal road accident. Her body was never found.

Thirty years later, Rowan has a child of her own. Afflicted by post-natal depression, she is convinced that she'll hurt her daughter unless she unpicks the mystery of her past, buried deep within a commune in the remote highlands of Scotland. Leaving her young family and life in London, she returns to her childhood home to find a failed utopia shrouded in secrecy. And there, with a looming cult leader, among the rites and rituals, the sacraments and ceremonies, is a single postcard dated a week after her mother's death. As she draws ever closer to the truth about her mother, she fears she might lose even herself.

Close Your Eyes is a powerful novel, exploring the eternal bonds of maternal love. Evoking the spirit of the 60s and 70s in its gentle, lyrical passion, it tells the secret history of a revolutionary social experiment, and, with unflinching honesty, depicts the impacts, both good and bad, that it had on its children.

The whole of Close Your Eyes is an admirable and intimate wrestling with the damages incurred by trying to heal, as Adorno once called modernity, "a damaged life"..anyone wanting to read a wise, emotionally literate gauge of the burdens - and blarney - of alternative living should buy it immediately. -- Pat Kane * Independent *
In Close Your Eyes, Ewan Morrison carries off the compelling second-person voice brilliantly...the novel is beautifully set to a soundtrack of Rowan’s childhood. * Times Literary Supplement *
An insightful tale of a brave new world revisited. -- Nick Rennison * Sunday Times *
Beautiful. Haunting. If Ewan Morrison was a woman, Close Your Eyes would be destined for the Orange Prize shortlist. -- Helen Walsh
A brave, sensitive, painful novel, Close Your Eyes is an alternative history of the last forty years, an exploration of the damage idealistic, well-intentioned parents can do to their children, and a reminder that it is sometimes the people who are absent who really fill our lives. -- James Robertson

Ewan Morrison is the author of three novels and a collection of short stories, winning a Scottish Arts Council Award in 2005. He lives in Glasgow.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780224096232
ISBN 10	0224096230
Title	Close Your Eyes
Author	Ewan Morrison
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Vintage Publishing
Year published	2012-08-02
Number of pages	272
Prizes	Winner of Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Fiction Award 2013 (UK)
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.