The Wonder
1st Edition
Published on 10. November 2009
320 pages
978-1-4090-8817-2 (ISBN)
Description
'Evans interweaves the strands of her three-generation narrative with an exhilarating sense of place and period' Daily Telegraph
Read the dazzling family mystery from the Women's Prize-shortlisted author of Ordinary People
As a child Lucas thought that all children who'd lost their parents lived on water. Now a restless young man still living with his sister Denise on their West London narrowboat, he determines to find out more about the unexplained disappearance of his father, the charismatic Jamaican dancer, Antoney Matheus.
Thus unfolds a journey from fifties Kingston to sixties Notting Hill and the host of unforgettable characters who peopled Antoney's theatrical world, most importantly Carla, Lucas's mother. The result is a haunting family saga of absence and inheritance, the battle between love and creativity, and what drives a young man to take flight...
'Sparkles with mood, music and the sway of life' Marie Claire
'Diana Evans's fiction is emotionally intelligent, dark, funny, moving. The sheer energy in her novels is enthralling. A brilliant craftswoman, a master of the form, she makes the reader ask important questions of themselves and makes them laugh at the same time' Jackie Kay, British Council and National Centre for Writing's International Showcase on Britain's 10 best BAME writers
Read the dazzling family mystery from the Women's Prize-shortlisted author of Ordinary People
As a child Lucas thought that all children who'd lost their parents lived on water. Now a restless young man still living with his sister Denise on their West London narrowboat, he determines to find out more about the unexplained disappearance of his father, the charismatic Jamaican dancer, Antoney Matheus.
Thus unfolds a journey from fifties Kingston to sixties Notting Hill and the host of unforgettable characters who peopled Antoney's theatrical world, most importantly Carla, Lucas's mother. The result is a haunting family saga of absence and inheritance, the battle between love and creativity, and what drives a young man to take flight...
'Sparkles with mood, music and the sway of life' Marie Claire
'Diana Evans's fiction is emotionally intelligent, dark, funny, moving. The sheer energy in her novels is enthralling. A brilliant craftswoman, a master of the form, she makes the reader ask important questions of themselves and makes them laugh at the same time' Jackie Kay, British Council and National Centre for Writing's International Showcase on Britain's 10 best BAME writers
Reviews / Votes
The most dazzling depiction of the world of dance since Ballet Shoes' * The Times * Her prose is airbound at times - an exhilarating celebration of rhythm, sway and leap * Daily Mail * Darkens from an absorbing mystery into a touching reckoning... Most striking is the delicacy and power with which Evans depicts emotional disturbance * The Guardian * The story is complex, clever, seamlessly achieved, its many currents blending in harmony, sometimes in conflict, to recreate that sense of randomness and accident that resemble the truth of life in the chancy present...The author's passion burns on the page, along with an almost tactile relish of the act of writing itself * Scotsman * A serious work of art with sentences like ribbons of silk winding around a skeleton of haunting imagery... Evans was born to write this novel * Independent * The Wonder embraces its theme with great heart. It's hard not to be seduced by its talented, difficult hero * Financial Times * Evans interweaves the strands of her three-generation narrative with an exhilarating sense of place and period * Daily Telegraph * Sparkles with mood, music and the sway of street life * Marie Claire * Like the movement of the dancers it describes, it feels always, captivatingly, 'meant' * Times Literary Supplement * Evans...writes with eye-catching fluidity, gracefully pirouetting between Notting Hill in the 1990s, and the Caribbean a decade earlier * The Sunday Times *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
File size
0,34 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-4090-8817-2 (9781409088172)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
Diana Evans was a dancer before becoming a journalist and author. She has contributed to the Independent, Marie Claire, the Guardian, the Observer, Harper's Bazaar, the Daily Telegraph and many other publications, and holds an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia. Her first novel, 26a, received a Betty Trask award, a nomination for the Guardian First Book Award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel of the Year Award. It was the inaugural winner of the Orange Award for New Writers and has been translated into twelve languages. She lives in London.
