Showing results for "Barbara Comyns" in Classics

Growing up in Edwardian south London, Alice Rowlands longs for romance and excitement, for a release from a life that is dreary and lonely. Her father, a vet, is harsh and oppressive; his new girlfriend, brash and lascivious. Alice seeks refuge in fantasy, in her rapturous longing for Nicholas, a handsome young sailor, and in the blossoming of what she perceives as her occult powers. Harrowing and haunting, a Gothic tale that is a strange cross between Daphne Du Maurier and Stephen King, but will also intrigue readers of Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Diane Setterfield.

Pretty, unworldly Sophia is twenty-one years old and hastily married to a young painter called Charles. An artist's model with an eccentric collection of pets, she is ill-equipped to cope with the bohemian London of the 1930s, where poverty, babies (however much loved) and her husband conspire to torment her. Hoping to add some spice to her life, Sophia takes up with Peregrine, a dismal, ageing critic, and comes to regret her marriage - and her affair.