Mary George of Allnorthover - by Lavinia Greenlaw (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Lavinia Greenlaw's mesmerising debut novel about growing up in the surreal banality of mid-'70s Essex.

Lavinia Greenlaw puts before us the monochrome, immemorial middle England of the 1970s in all its dowdy glory, and has us see through the mercurial, bewitching Mary George's eyes how a seemingly static landscape is suddenly illuminated by the most vivid bursts of energy, colour and drama. Punk's torch flares into life and singes the fringes of England. Mary George bears witness and burns brighter still: she is more memorable than even the extraordinary events around her, and the reader will find it devastatingly hard to leave her company at the end of this exceptional debut about growing up under the shadow of an unknowable, inescapable small-town mystery.

Review Quotes

"A subtle and moving portrait of stormy adolescence."

"Beautifully observed...suggestive, elusive, magical."

"Gorgeous writing...There's an intelligence and textured richness to Lavinia Greenlaw's writing...rich images...singing sentences...perfectly constructed paragraphs."

"With perceptiveness and verve, Lavinia Greenlaw charts the travails of a spunky new heroine, Mary George, caught in the treacheries and stagnancy of an English backwater."