English Correspondence by Janet Davey
Sylvie is half French and half English. Since the death of her mother, she has written weekly letters to her father in London. When he too dies unexpectedly, she waits for the letter she knows he must have posted before his death. And as she waits, her carefully ordered life finally begins to unravel. Janet Davey's mesmerising first novel has the deceptive simplicity of a perfect piece of chamber music, or a Vermeer interior. Set in the Meuse - an area of France that is on the way to everywhere but nowhere in itself - it involves a small cast of characters who move around each other in a complex game of emotional chess. Sylvie and her husband own a small hotel. He cooks; she runs it. Their lives are lived in public, as if they are permanently on stage - not ideal if your marriage is crumbling. The death of both her parents crystallises Sylvie's sense that she has made all the wrong choices. But to change anything would bring the whole fragile card tower tumbling down. Brilliantly observed, delightfully witty and beautifully written, English Correspondence condenses all the major questions of adult life - love, marriage, children, grief - into the time it takes to arrange a funeral and discover what happened to a missing letter. It marks the debut of a writer to rank alongside Jean Rhys in the incisive exploration of human desire and weakness.
Billed as a Hotel du Lac for a younger generation, Davey's debut novel is a lean and elegant discourse on grief at the loss of parents and the subtle disintegration of understanding between a married coupleSylvie runs a small hotel in France with her chef husband, and in five years has exchanged 200 letters with her father in England. The latter's death and the loss of his final letter brings her to a marital crossroads. Although entirely different in context, Davey's novel has the same limpid style as Girl with a Pearl Earring and captures emotional reactions to the smallest nuance as the public running of the hotel divides from Sylvie's intense inner observations. The death of a customer at his retirement party and the awkwardness of Christmas add to her separation from what has gone before. An exceptionally good read.
Janet Davey was born in 1952. She worked as a teacher, particularly with children who had learning difficulties, until she gave it up to bring up her own children and support her husband, who had become, unexpectedly, a very successful businessman. In 2001, she went through a difficult divorce herself, which is to some extent the inspiration for this book. She has left it quite late to write her first novel, but now that her children have left home, she is writing full-time and has embarked on a second novel.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780701173647 |
| ISBN 10 | 0701173645 |
| Title | English Correspondence |
| Author | Janet Davey |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Vintage Publishing |
| Year published | 2003-01-16 |
| Number of pages | 208 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |