FitzGerald writes about outliers in society, people who are on the margins of acceptability and feel they cannot fit in. This book tells of a woman who moves to a new place to live and sets up a bookshop against all the odds.
In a small East Anglian town, Florence Green decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop.
Hardborough becomes a battleground. Florence has tried to change the way things have always been done, and as a result, she has to take on not only the people who have made themselves important, but natural and even supernatural forces too. Her fate will strike a chord with anyone who knows that life has treated them with less than justice.
A poignant story of an older lady who goes to live in a hotel among other elderly rejects of life. Taylor describes them sympathetically and shows Mrs. Claremont's resilience. Taylor's exquisite writing portrays the bleakness of their lives, Mrs C's enlivened by her new friendship with a young man.
'Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont is, for me, her masterpiece' - Robert McCrum, Guardian, 'The Best 100 Novels' 'An author of great subtlety, great compassion and great depth' - SARAH WATERS 'Jane Austen, Elizabeth Taylor, Elizabath Bowen - soul-sisters all' ANNE TYLER
On a rainy Sunday in January, the recently widowed Mrs Palfrey arrives at the Claremont Hotel where she will spend her remaining days. Her fellow residents are magnificently eccentric and endlessly curious, living off crumbs of affection and snippets of gossip. Together, upper lips stiffened, they fight off their twin enemies: boredom and the Grim Reaper.
The unusual setting draws the reader into a different world as a group of English nuns travel to an isolated mountain top in the Himalayas to set up a nunnery. The tale tells of different personalities clashing both inside the convent and with the local population outside. There is an underlying sexual tension as the nunnery is a palace where the harem used to be, and one of the sister becomes infatuated with the agent who helps them.
In the days when it was the General's `harem' palace, ladies with their retinues and rich clothes could be seen walking on the high windy terraces. At night, music floated out over villages and gorges far into the early hours. Now the General's son has bestowed it upon the disciplined Sisters of Mary.
Beginning work in the orchards and opening a school and a dispensary for the mountain people, the small band of Sisters are depended for help on the English agent, Mr Dean. But his charm and insolent candour are disconcerting. When he says bluntly `This is no place…
Libertine London investigates the sex lives of women from 1680 to 1830, the period known as the long eighteenth century. It uncovers the various experiences of women, whether mistresses, adulteresses or those involved in the sex trade. From renowned courtesans to downtrodden streetwalkers, Julie Peakman examines the multifaceted lives of these women within brothels, on stage and even behind bars.
Based on new research into court transcripts, asylum records, magazines, pamphlets, satires, songs, theatre plays and erotica, we learn of the gruesome treatment of women who were sexually active outside of marriage. Julie Peakman looks at sex from women's points of view, undercutting the traditional image of the bawdy eighteenth century to expose a more sordid side, of women left distressed, ostracized and vilified for their sexual behaviour.
