Ruffian on the Stair (Virago Modern Classics)

Ruffian on the Stair (Virago Modern Classics)

by NinaBawden (Author)

Synopsis

In six days Silas Mudd will be one hundred years old and is alarmingly healthy - more than can be said of his son. 'Not sure he'll make old bones' he confides loudly to his daughter-in-law. Grumpily flattered by the fuss over his impending party - even from his irritating family, Silas' greater pleasure is 'to go over his life' and the women whom he loved and who made trouble for him: his sterling and capable Aunt; his wonderfully vulgar second wife Bella; Molly, a music-hall singing sister; and Effie, his first and hopeless wife. Silas is the only one left who knows exactly what is shoring up his family. And now he sits, waiting and thinking, just wondering what it would be like if he were to say ...

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 242
Edition: New e.
Publisher: Virago
Published: 02 Nov 2006

ISBN 10: 1844083802
ISBN 13: 9781844083800
Book Overview: * Website activity

Media Reviews
Her great talent is to be able to take you along a perfectly ordinary street, rip the facade away and show the strange and passionate events that go on behind closed doors * DAILY TELEGRAPH *
It is a measure of Bawden's skill, that she manages to show both the terrors of extreme longevity and its comic potential. But then she is a wonderfully accomplished writer and this is a very enjoyable book. * THE TIMES *
An upper-middle class version of Mike Leigh's SECRETS AND LIES. * INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY *
Bawden has a penetraing eye for both the insalubrious and gorgeous detail, homing in with language that is always crisp and precise. * GUARDIAN *
Author Bio
Nina Bawden (1925-2012) was one of Britain's best-loved writers for both adults and children. Several of her children's books - Carrie's War, a Phoenix Award winner;The Peppermint Pig, which won the Guardian Fiction Award; and Keeping Henry - have become contemporary classics. She wrote over forty novels, slightly more than half of which are for adults, and she was shortlisted for the 1987 Man Booker Prize for Circles of Deceit. She received the prestigious S T Dupont Golden Pen Award for a lifetime's contribution to literature in 2004, and in 2010 The Birds on the Trees was shortlisted for the Lost Booker of 1970.