Crocodile Soup

Julia Darling

Description

Perhaps it will be all right, I thought. Perhaps, when I go to work, there will be peace, and Theobald will stop jumping from foot to foot, and Eva will no longer be beautiful.'Gert Hardcastle leads a life of isolation cataloguing the Egyptian artefacts at a northern museum - until the First Letter drops onto her desk. That's the day she meets ballroom-dancing, iris-eyed Eva, and her careful, stilted existence begins to unravel.As Gert begins her strange courtship of Eva, she looks back on her eccentric, surreal upbringing - the rambling house with its resident Victorian ghost, her peculiar, telepathic twin, her father George with his family crocodile farm, and her beautiful, neglectful mother Jean, whose letters continue to disturb her peace. Award-winning author Julia Darling's classic tale of the search for love, identity and acceptance is funny, poignant and bizarre by turns, as Gert gradually learns that her journey to the future must go via the past.

Informations

• Publié par: Distributed by eBookpartnership
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781909486164
• Langue: English

Extrait

Crocodile Soup

Julia Darling was a novelist, poet and playwright. Born in Winchester in 1956 in the house that Jane Austen died which partially inspired her first novelCrocodile Soup (1988); it was long listed for the Orange Prize for fiction. Her second novelThe Taxi Driver's Daughter2003) was set in (Penguin Newcastle upon Tyne where she moved to in 1980; it was long listed for the Man Booker Prize and short listed for the Encore Award. She wrote many plays for stage and radio, includingManifesto for the New CityNorthern Stage and for Appointments andPersonal BelongingsLive Theatre. An anthology of for her playsEating the Elephant and other Playswas published by New Writing North in 2005. The title play was about breast cancer which Julia was diagnosed with in 1994. Through her poetry collectionsSudden Collapses in Public Places(2003), andApology for Absence (2004), she sought to open up the language around illness and healthcare, particularly breast cancer. Julia’s on-line weblog was adapted by Jackie Kay into The Waiting Room and was dramatised on Radio 4 in 2007. Julia was Fellow in Literature and Health at Newcastle University and editedThe Poetry Cure (Bloodaxe, 2004) with Cynthia Fuller. In 2003 Julia was awarded the Northern Rock Writers Award and in 2014 was honoured by the Newcastle Gateshead Initiative with a Local Heroes bronze plaque in the city. She had made Newcastle her home since 1980 until she died in 2005. To find out more about her work visit www.juliadarling.co.uk