Tricks Of The Light by Alison Fell
Broom is in her 50s. An artist and theatre set designer, she is spending Christmas in the Alps working on a commission for an opera in Leipzig. Five years before, she had fallen passionately in love with the flawed but lovable Al. But their fiery and complex relationship was tragically cut short when Al was involved in an accident from which he didn't recover. After five years of mourning (and celibacy) Broom is ready to engage with the world again - and it is here, in the Alps, that she meets Micky Flint, a slick, attractive 30-something advertising executive who is working on a new pitch. ntercut with this story is that of Lockhart, with whom Broom once had an affair. Returning for Christmas after many years to the family estate on the remote Scottish island of Callasay, he too is confronting his past- the younger brother he abandoned to the austerity of the island and who was instrumental in his love affair with Broom; and their autocratic father to whom Lockhart must break some painful family news. s Broom looks back on past lovers and how her life has unfurled, she becomes strangely drawn to Micky, her polar opposite. And for their own very different reasons an intimacy de
This latest offering from the author of The Mistress of Lilliput is perhaps too clever for its own good because it keeps sidetracking from its main story strand - that of a middle-aged woman who passionately loved and painfully lost a flawed adventurer fatally injured in a cycling accident in TurkeyFell's command of linguistics turns many passages into a pyrotechnic display and she is highly perceptive on middle age. But the storytelling is layered into literary complexity with other characters' stories, including a troubled family in the Scottish Highlands and an advertising executive of changeling nature, destined to become involved with the older woman. A demanding, intellectual read that flits about its different locations and the fault-lines of its participants, ultimately becoming a story of overcoming loss. Its publishers hope for the Orange Prize.
Alison Fell is Scottish. An award-winning poet, she is also a short story writer, novelist and anthologist. She regularly teaches a writing course at Arvon, has been a Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia and is soon to take up a writing fellowship at UCL. She lives in London.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780385605083 |
| ISBN 10 | 0385605080 |
| Title | Tricks Of The Light |
| Author | Alison Fell |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | Transworld Publishers Ltd |
| Year published | 2003-03-03 |
| Number of pages | 432 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |