An Advent Calendar
Published on 5. November 2015
160 pages
978-0-349-00708-3 (ISBN)
Description
FROM THE AUTHOR SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE (1996) AND THE WHITBREAD PRIZE (2003)
'Shena Mackay was a sixties phenomenon' GUARDIAN
'A Christmas story without the mistletoe and the message, but no less moving' KIRKUS REVIEWS
The story begins as an ambulance pulls away from the butcher's shop, taking Mick to the hospital after he has carelessly hacked off a finger while preparing John's order. John's wife, Marguerite, and two young children are forced to live with his uncle until he can find work. Marguerite has a brief affair, an escape from the poverty and boredom of day-to-day life - and John, attempting to make amends for Mick's lost finger, is chased down by the butcher's buddies.
These tumultuous events all take place during the first twenty-five days of December, leaving each character facing a Christmas of poverty, impossible love and loneliness.
'Shena Mackay was a sixties phenomenon' GUARDIAN
'A Christmas story without the mistletoe and the message, but no less moving' KIRKUS REVIEWS
The story begins as an ambulance pulls away from the butcher's shop, taking Mick to the hospital after he has carelessly hacked off a finger while preparing John's order. John's wife, Marguerite, and two young children are forced to live with his uncle until he can find work. Marguerite has a brief affair, an escape from the poverty and boredom of day-to-day life - and John, attempting to make amends for Mick's lost finger, is chased down by the butcher's buddies.
These tumultuous events all take place during the first twenty-five days of December, leaving each character facing a Christmas of poverty, impossible love and loneliness.
Reviews / Votes
Shena Mackay was a sixties phenomenon - a startlingly original novelist and glamorous emissary of Swinging London . . . she is regarded as one of our finest prose stylists * Guardian * This early novel . . . also displays the supple economy of her prose, a style that accommodates a constant play of precisely observed and startlingly vivid images * Publishers Weekly * A dark Christmas tale with intimations of light, this set in that unmerry old England where unemployment and squalor still distort lives, and things mostly get worse. Acclaimed English writer Mackay excels at depicting characters struggling to survive amidst random disasters and sapping tedium . . . A Christmas story without the mistletoe and the message, but no less moving. * Kirkus Reviews *More details
Series
Edition
Digital original
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Little, Brown Book Group
Edition type
Digital original
File size
0,24 MB
ISBN-13
978-0-349-00708-3 (9780349007083)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Shena Mackay was born in Edinburgh in 1944. Her writing career began when she won a prize for a poem written when she was fourteen. Two novellas, Dust Falls on Eugene Schlumberger and Toddler on the Run were published before she was twenty. Redhill Rococo won the 1987 Fawcett Prize, Dunedin won a 1994 Scottish Arts Council Book Award, The Orchard on Fire was shortlisted for the 1996 Booker Prize and, in 2003, Heligoland was shortlisted for both the Orange Prize and Whitbread Novel Award. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and lives in Southampton.
