Maggie Gee: Writing the Condition-of-England Novel

Mine Özyurt Kiliç is Associate Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Dogus University, Istanbul, Turkey.

One can end here with hope, as Gee's novels so often do, that Kilic's attention to her work raises her profile, promotes wider reading of her fiction, and aids the enacting of its wish that it might change readers' opinions and actions enough to have palpable effects on the betterment of humankind, in Britain and beyond. It certainly has the power to do so. -- Sarah Dillon, University of Cambridge Contemporary Women's Writing Mine Ozyurt Kilic perceptively demonstrates that Gee blends the tradition of the Victorian social problem novel with experimental literary techniques to examine pressing social and environmental issues in late twentieth century and contemporary Britain. The first full-length study of her fiction, this excellent analysis of Gee's themes, concerns, style, and craft, gives an important British writer the long-overdue critical attention she deserves. -- Dr Emma Parker, Senior Lecturer in English, University of Leicester, UK Combining close reading of texts with thematic discussion, Mine Ozyurt Kilic creates a comprehensive and intellectually stimulating account of Maggie Gee's fiction. Her analysis of Gee's work in the context of the condition-of-England novel and related cultural/social topics is perceptively argued. The study, and the interview with Gee it introduces, will prove invaluable to students and researchers. -- Dr Paulina Palmer, author of The Queer Uncanny: New Perspectives on the Gothic (University of Wales Press, 2012) Mine Ozyurt Kilic's Maggie Gee makes an entirely convincing argument for Gee's importance as one of our most interesting contemporary writers. Kilic contends that Gee's fiction inherits yet rewrites the tradition of the Condition of England novel, and debates the relationship between modernist self-referentiality and ethical engagement to create what she terms a 'self-conscious' realism. The book also carefully elaborates her interest in questions of authorship within the contemporary culture industry, the importance of family and the connections between ecological issues and ethnic and racial rivalries. What runs through all her works, Kilic argues, is an ethics of connection that ultimately transforms the relationship between individuals and their larger collectives. This is a wonderfully rich and well-informed exploration of Maggie Gee's work. -- Susan Watkins, Reader in Twentieth-Century Women's Fiction, Leeds Metropolitan University, UK Ozyurt Kilic's book should be warmly welcomed. Indeed, the questions it poses about the connections between social engagement and narrative innovation are helpfully provocative and it focuses us on the importance of Gee's voice in the contemporary literary landscape. European Journal of English Studies

• PrefaceAcknowledgementsList of Abbreviations Part 1: Introduction1. Contextualising Maggie Gee's Fiction Part 2: Major Works 2. Author Flinging Herself From the Ivory Tower: Dying, In Other Words 3. Of the Nuclear Family and the Hibakusha: The Burning Book4. Telescopic View of England, England: Light Years5. Hard Times: Grace and Where Are the Snows6. Are Such Things Done on Albion's Shore?: Lost Children 7. Environmental Crisis, from Fact to Fiction: The Ice People and The Flood8. Of the Two Nations: The White Family9. Authorship in a Globalised World: My Cleaner and My DriverPart 3: Criticism and Contexts10. Author InterviewNotes BibliographyIndex