The Orchard on Fire

The Orchard on Fire

by ShenaMackay (Author)

Synopsis

When Percy and Betty Harlency abandon their seedy Streatham pub, for the Copper Kettle Tearoom in Kent, life for their daughter April changes dramatically. She is befriended by the wonderfully dangerous Ruby, whose red hair and brutal home life emphasise her love of fire, and by the immaculately dressed Mr Greenridge who likes to follow her around the village. Mingling the innocent with the sinister and laced with the tragic and the bizarre, this is a rare evocation of a 1950s childhood.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 224
Edition: Reprint
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 23 Jun 1997

ISBN 10: 0749394064
ISBN 13: 9780749394066
Book Overview: 'So touched with magic, so achingly sad and funny that my breath was taken away... Wonderful' The Times

Media Reviews
A harvest festival of sensuous detail, intimate, rich... Compulsively readable Daily Telegraph Mackay moved this reader to tears, not from grief, but from joy. Now there's a skill -- Fay Weldon Mail on Sunday 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 -- Philip Hensher Guardian Shena Mackay is a writer in prime: at the height of her powers... Her prose is flawlessly seductive and comic, confidently witty and sensual -- Julie Myerson Independent on Sunday Wholly delightful... Shena Mackay is an assured artist -- A. N. Wilson Evening Standard
Author Bio
Shena Mackay was born in Edinburgh. She is the author of four previous collections of stories - Babies in Rhinestones, Dreams of Dead Women's Handbags, The Laughing Academy and The World's Smallest Unicorn. Her novels include Dunedin, The Orchard on Fire (which was shortlisted for the 1996 Booker Prize), The Artist's Widow and Heligoland (which was shortlisted for the 2003 Orange Prize).