An Empty Room

by TalithaStevenson (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2003

  $3.37

  'People have told me my face has a far-off look. When I catch myself in a mirror, I look like someone who grew up in a place nobody ever drove past, a place with a sky like a blank TV screen.' Emily is nineteen. It is her last summer before going to university and she has come back home to a family on the verge of disintegration. She craves genuine feelings, happiness, but her experiences have left her jaded and cynical, just like the friends she hangs out with, and her beautiful but damaged boyfriend Tom. Watching her parents' unhappy marriage, she has absorbed its lessons too well. Love is fleeting. Sex, and divorce, are easy. Rely on nobody. Emily begins an affair with Simon, a decision made in a moral vacuum. But by the end of the summer she will be forced to confront the terrible consequences of her actions, both for herself and those she loves.

• Used

  Paperback
  2005

  $3.37

  'So lucent, so resonant, so exquisitely written and above all, so engaging' Tim Lott After months away, Emily returns to London and to a family on the verge of disintegration. She spends nights in cramped bars, drinking and smoking with her beautiful but damaged boyfriend Tom and his friends. It is a lifestyle that leaves her feeling directionless and jaded. In her search to believe in something or someone, she finds herself irresistibly drawn to Simon, Tom's complex and charming cousin. But Simon is married, and as he and Emily become closer and the summer draws to an end they are forced to make decisions that will have a devastating effect on both families. 'Its denouement ought to surprise none but Emily herself, cast adrift in her own love stories, yet An Empty Room echoes with the dreamy unreality of a hot summer night' Observer 'Written with honesty and an element of wistfulness which combine in a voice that is clear and true' Raffaella Barker