Fien Volders Knihy

In America. Una donna, Anna, saluta la madre Grace e con la sua bambina Rachel sale in auto. Un acquazzone improvviso, violento, che come un velo nero copre ogni cosa. Un cane e un camion. Una frenata, un urto. In Inghilterra. Un uomo, David, un botanico. Solitario, sempre assorto, perso nei suoi pensieri. Una telefonata. È Grace, la donna che 11 anni prima si è sempre rifiutata di rispondere alla sua martellante domanda: "Dov'è andata Anna?" Grace. Le sue uniche ragioni di vita sono la figlia e la nipotina Rachel. Ma ora che Anna è in coma chi si prenderà cura di Rachel? Rachel. Una bambina molto dotata: per la musica, la matematica, il disegno, la geografia... ma terribilmente solitaria, che vaga in un mondo tutto suo.

Ospalé prímorské mestečko Merham neponúka v päťdesiatych rokoch dvadsiateho storočia veľa vzrušenia. Aspoň v očiach mladej Lottie a Celie, ktoré vyrastajú v jednom dome takmer ako sestry. Keď sa do Arcadie, veľkolepého sídla v štýle art deco, nasťahuje skupina bohémov, Lottie a Celiu priláka ich alternatívny spôsob života, taký poburujúci pre miestnych obyvateľov. Lenže to, čo sa v dome stane, má napokon tragické a trvalé následky pre všetkých. Teraz, takmer po päťdesiatich rokoch, Arcadiu renovujú a znova vyvoláva u Merhamčanov silné emócie. Ako sa dom prebúdza k životu, prebúdzajú sa aj tajomstvá pochované pred mnohými rokmi. A vynára sa otázka – môže človek uniknúť pred svojou minulosťou?

'I am sixteen. I am as old as the century'It is 1916. Vincent is sixteen, on the brink of manhood. Vincent is aristocratic and privileged, frequenting the salons of Paris while France is at war and the city almost deserted of men. In that brutal summer, Vincent's beauty and precocity captivate two men: Marcel, some thirty years his senior, a writer and celebrated socialite; and Arthur, the twenty-one year old son of one of the servants, who is now a soldier at the front. Both relationships become love affairs of a kind - of the mind or of the body. Vincent intuitively tries to keep his passions separate, but over the weeks of indolent Parisian summer and far-off war, confidences are made, absences endured, secrets revealed. All of these men will suffer, and Vincent will lose the last vestiges of his childhood innocence. In the Absence of Men is a stunning first novel: in its daring in representing Marcel Proust as a character, in the beauty of its prose and in its delicacy of feeling. It is a quite remarkable debut.

Stella Carlyle is a successful singer. Quirky, talented, abrasive, sexy, she has serial casual lovers until she falls in love with Robert - an equally successful eye surgeon. But Robert is married, and the strain of their long-standing affair is beginning to tell on both. American ex-fighter pilot Spencer McColl - 'overpaid, oversexed and over here' in World War II - had an affair with an English widow. But it was her daughter he really loved, and on a brief return visit to commemorate the war veterans, their one-night stand leads to a daughter - Stella - whom Spencer never knows. Harry Latimer, a captain in the Hussars, is posted to the Crimea and leaving behind the family home in Wiltshire, and an undeclared passion for his widowed sister-in-law. Their contrasting experiences - Harry amid the squalor and brutality of war, Rachel in the tranquil Wiltshire landscape - make a poignant third strand to the narrative.