FICTION · GENERAL
Sue Gee
Sue Gee was born in India, where her father was an Army officer. She had a her elder brother, Robert, now a retired radiographer living in Spain. She grew up on a Devon farm, and in a village in Leicestershire, before instaled in Surrey in 1960. She lived in north London for 27 years with the journalist Marek Mayer, they had a son, Jamie. She married Mayer in November 2003, less of two years before his death on 23th July 2005. Now, she lived in the town of Hay-on-Wye in the Welsh borders. Published since 1980, her novel Letters From Prague, was serialised on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour and Her play, Ancient and Modern, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2004, with Juliet Stevenson in the lead role. Her novel The Hours of the Night which received wide critical acclaim and was the controversial winner of the 1997 Romantic Novel of the Year Award, an award she won again in 2004 by her novel Thin Air. She was Programme Leader for the MA Writing programme at Middlesex University from 2000 to 2008. She is currently reading for a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of East Anglia. She has been awarded a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship.
The Porthkerris Council School stood half-way up the step hill which climbed from the heart of the little town to the empty moors which lay beyond.
— from Coming home
Most acclaimed
Keeping Secrets
Revealing the truth can be a real pain. Especially the truth about yourself. . . . All her life Stephanie's been looking for a guy like Jonathan. But now that she's found him, she's going out of her way to mess up -- and finding plenty of guys willing to help. Bess, meanwhile, can't get past the tragic loss of her boyfriend. But she may find the support and comfort she needs in the most surprising place. . . . The place to be, though, is Club Z and Nancy wants to check it out. She's working on an expose for Wilder Times that could put her at odds with her editor and with Jake. Everybody's feeling the pressure, and opening night at the club will be a time to blow off steam . . . or blow the lid off all the secrets on campus!
The Chrysalids
1955
This book is about a post apocalyptic world returned back to the times of the horse and carriage seen through the eyes of a young boy. Deviations are punished or destroyed and what few books remained govern the way people think about change and the differences from the norm. The twists and turns in this rather short book as bought me back to it many times over the years, which is very unusual for me. It would make a great Spielberg movie with the authors descriptions of the scarred landscape and the characters being fantastic. you could really picture the trials and tribulations of these people. When the young boy David finds his closest friend has a sixth toe on each foot and is asked to keep it a secret from his god fearing tyrant of a father, he comes to question his own secrets and what would happen to him if anyone found out. I wont tell you the twist, but definitely recommend this read to anyone, young or old.