Undressing Stone by Hazel Manuel
A mysterious tale that flirts with the gothic as it interweaves divorcee Sian's conversations with her psychiatrist and her newly-reclusive life in France, where she meets an enigmatic sculptor who likes to work in the nude. All the while, Sian holds a secret she has told no-one.
"A highly readable multi-layered story tracing the life of a complex woman in search of new beginnings — Undressing Stone is written with insight and passion by award winning writer Hazel Manuel; Following the realization that she feels trapped in her life - partly caused by working in the confinement of a job she detests and with her marriage ended and her son having flown the nest to travel the world, Sian Evans is determined to turn a page on her old life and leaves Cardiff, Wales, for her Aunt and Uncle's remote cottage in the wilds of rural France. In fact it is only a relatively short drive from the airport and nearest town, but such is life in a hamlet in the West of France - there is but one bus a week and a bread van that delivers patisserie and du pain to the residents - also once a week - it feels very remote. Combine that with Sian having thrown her mobile phone into the sea and the fact that she has no computer and no car she becomes locked into a different sort of seemingly closed environment.; Undressing Stone is a character driven story written with panache, insight and wit. Sian's encounters early in the story with for example the Occupational Therapist - he of the Disney socks brigade - are extremely funny and many of the characters she builds relationships with later in France are rounded and true with some of them very familiar as character types, yet not at all in a cliched way. I think for example that we have all met a Mme Volt brusque to the point of rudeness and seemingly judgemental, she softens a bit towards our heroine as Sian earns herself a place in the locale proving to be a very useful member of the local community.; Hazel Manuel has written a strong novel revealing the well delineated character of a woman who is aware not only of the ironies and coincidences in life and of complexities of relationships, but one who is up for a challenge and all of this despite the fact that she is psychologically traumatized when she first arrives in France.; To my mind Undressing Stone is a well paced novel and a page turner with not a little hint of the Gothic containing a strong suspenseful air to our protagonist's story. There are some disturbing and visceral scenes in the novel especially the one with Creepy Roger. Overall though this is a story very much about coming to terms with life's cruelties and absurdities. It speeds along with many of the events in Sian's life, past and present, hauntingly told. There are also some evocative descriptions of nature's flora and fauna including relationships with cats and a rather unusual and somewhat ghostly house guest.; Such is the brilliance of the writing and ambiguity of some of the scenes and settings, we are not always one hundred per cent sure what is real and what is not and this lends itself well to the overall tension of the novel.; We leave Sian on a somewhat ambiguous yet hopeful note. Through her experiences and encounters, the layers of her angst - what the author calls softness are peeled away - and Sian is by the conclusion of the novel in the process of being whole again... The figure within the marble is exposed or is certainly beginning to be so. Sian is ultimately led to a realization (hinted at by the by the central metaphor and title of the novel), that life and its experiences can be very challenging but also liberating.; I really enjoyed this book...did not want it to end." — Teresa Dolan, December, 2018
Hazel Manuel is a UK born novelist who began writing after a career in education, first as a teacher/lecturer and, later, as a business leader within the education sector. She now lives and writes in Paris where she hosts "Paris Writers Working Lunches". Hazel's first novel, Kanyakumari was written over three trips to India and was the winner of the 2013 Cinnamon Press Novel award. Her second novel The Geranium Woman was published in 2016 by Cinnamon Press. She is currently working on a psychological thriller, Cliff. You can find out more about Hazel and her work at www.hazelmanuel.net. It is important to Hazel to discover and explore that which she finds authentic in herself, in other people and in the ideas which inform the ways in which we live our lives and it is this search for authenticity that characterises her novels. What Hazel hopes to achieve through themes of uncertainty, loss, obsession, power, change, fear, and of questioning life and the self, is that the reader travels with her characters through an archetypical inner journey that is fundamentally satisfying because it could equally be their own.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781788640145 |
| ISBN 10 | 1788640144 |
| Title | Undressing Stone |
| Author | Hazel Manuel |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | Cinnamon Press |
| Year published | 2018-06-04 |
| Number of pages | 260 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |