Shena MacKay – författare

Here is a wonderful collection of short stories by the writer known for ''the Mackay vision, suburban - as kitsch, as unexceptional, and yet as rich in history and wonder as a plain Victorian terrace house, its threshold radiant with tiling and stained-glass birds of paradise encased in leaded lights'' - Guardian.Shena Mackay, who first came to fame before the age of twenty with two novellas, is the doyenne of the short form. In this volume of previously uncollected stories - including those read on radio - she constantly surprises with a view of the ordinary world that is not at all ordinary.A grasshopper determinedly takes up residence on a bathroom ceiling; a gecko hiding in a cupboard brings a strange sort of luck; a woman spies from a distance two older women friends after many long years and a memory of how they gallopedin the playground as Starlight Blaze and Pepperpot plays sweetly, suddenly in her mind; pigs are swaddled in blankets, looking like babies in shawls; luggage is packed with youthful hopes and ideals.She observes how people rub along and reveals the best and worst of us all: a disgruntled schoolboy and his hapless teacher conquer mountains and their antipathy for each other; a girl with green eyes and iridescent hair discovers revenge; a race to be the best mushroom-picker creates only losers; and rotten apples, in the right pair of hands, make a loving pie. Shena Mackay is a generous and keen-eyed chronicler of the everyday; she deftly brings wisdom and humour to the worlds she creates, worlds that we suddenly, excitingly see anew. She is an utterly original writer.

FROM THE AUTHOR SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE (1996) AND THE WHITBREAD PRIZE (2003)''The Mackay vision . . . as rich in history and wonder as a plain Victorian terrace house'' GUARDIAN ''A national treasure . . . She has achieved that rarest of things for a writer'' DAILY TELEGRAPH''A highly original talent'' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENTThe transition of Coral Fairweather from village beauty to village outcast begins in the short golden days of autumn with the fathering of her first child by a vagrant painter. Soon, fuelled by the suspicion and gossip of those who see, in Coral''s hand-to-mouth existence and crumbling cottage, a rejection of all that is respectable, rather than the fierce pride that prevents her from seeking help from the Authorities or from the man who would love her. Spurred on by a malicious widow, the Parish Council agree to purge their neat village of this ''pariah'' and her children. This bitter witch hunt speeds towards a terrifying climax in a distinctive novel enriched by crystalline images of the natural world.

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.

FROM THE AUTHOR SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE (1996) AND THE WHITBREAD PRIZE (2003)''The Mackay vision . . . as rich in history and wonder as a plain Victorian terrace house'' GUARDIAN ''A national treasure . . . She has achieved that rarest of things for a writer'' DAILY TELEGRAPH''A dark romp but told with great panache and empathy . . . it works-exceedingly well'' KIRKUS REVIEWS In A Bowl of Cherries, Shena Mackay tells the story of twin brothers whose lives are inexorably intertwined: Rex, a self-absorbed and successful writer, and Stanley, a minor poet who works as a dishwasherRex lives on the family estate being the older of the twins by one minute with his unhappy wife, Daphne, who writes children''s books. Their overweight daughter, Daisy, lives nearby, and as a result of a guilty secret of her own, has married an overbearing, misogynist, and skinflint husband, Julian. Rex''s illegitimate son, Seamus, fourteen, discovers Daisy quite by accident and their relationship blossoms despite the many flawed characters that surround them. He carries a family secret that proves to be devastating, but which ultimately releases his half-sister Daisy from her torments.

FROM THE AUTHOR SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE (1996) AND THE WHITBREAD PRIZE (2003)''A highly original talent'' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT''Mackay''s] gentle mastery of language is quite beyond showy displays of technique'' GUARDIAN ''Her visual observations glittering throughout the collection like jewels'' INDEPENDENTIn Babies in Rhinestones, the Alfred Ellis School of Fine Art and the Araidne Elliot School of Dance and Drama stand side by side, much to their proprietors'' dismay. The two trade insults daily as they exchange the mail that so often ends up in the wrong letterbox. The tension increases when the owners find that they have adopted the same stray cat.A wonderful collection of short stories presenting a picture of apparently ordinary events and the darker causes which may underlie them - an unsettling world of deceptive appearances, of hidden traps, subtle revenge and thinly-disguised menace.

FROM THE AUTHOR SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE (1996) AND THE WHITBREAD PRIZE (2003)''The Mackay vision . . . as rich in history and wonder as a plain Victorian terrace house'' GUARDIAN ''A national treasure . . . She has achieved that rarest of things for a writer'' DAILY TELEGRAPH''A highly original talent'' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENTIn stories as intriguing as their titles - Pink Cigarettes, Electric Blue Damsels, Other People''s Bathrobes - Shena Mackay demonstrates her uncanny ability to expose the menace of everyday life with humour and haunting accuracy. Harnessing Mackay''s darkly comic vision, an astonishing originality and vibrant prose, these remarkable short works provide ''novel-worthy dimensions in a few pages'' (New York Times Book Review).

FROM THE AUTHOR SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE (1996) AND THE WHITBREAD PRIZE (2003)''The Mackay vision . . . as rich in history and wonder as a plain Victorian terrace house'' GUARDIAN ''A national treasure . . . She has achieved that rarest of things for a writer'' DAILY TELEGRAPH ''The romantic, bizarre, and sometimes murderous underpinnings of seemingly drab suburban lives are deftly revealed in ten densely written tales'' KIRKUS REVIEWS An elderly woman, once an intrepid journalist, is paralysed with apprehension at the thought of meeting the daughter of her dearest friend. A budding writer is taken on a amanuensis by a famous woman novelist, with disastrous results. A would-be biographer visits a home from retired clowns . . . With her miraculously sharp eye for the telling detail, her nose for the secrets smouldering behind the most staid suburban facades, Shena Mackays''s wonderful collection of short stories combine the macabre and mundane to brilliant effect.

FROM THE AUTHOR SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE (1996) AND THE WHITBREAD PRIZE (2003)''The Mackay vision . . . as rich in history and wonder as a plain Victorian terrace house'' GUARDIAN''Her style has a lyric elegance that has deceived critics into describing her, with that most dismissive term of faint praise, as ''gentle'' DAILY TELEGRAPH ''The bizarre and the banal, the half-remembered and the yet-to-come'' INDEPENDENT Shena Mackay is one of the very best short-story writers in the world. The Atmospheric Railway contains not only thirteen brilliant new stories, but a selection of twenty-three more from her previous collections, making it a delight for her existing admirers and the perfect introduction to her work for newcomers.

FROM THE AUTHOR SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE (1996) AND THE WHITBREAD PRIZE (2003)''The Mackay vision . . . as rich in history and wonder as a plain Victorian terrace house'' GUARDIAN ''A national treasure . . . She has achieved that rarest of things for a writer'' DAILY TELEGRAPH''A highly original talent'' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT The Laughing Academy is as witty, black and compelling as anything Shena Mackay has written. From antiques fayres to Cloud-Cuckoo-Land, geriatric wards to Crystal Palace, this collection offers a journey around the bizarre yet familiar characters and settings that Mackay has made her own. There are Roy and Muriel Rowley, the fun-running charity-junkies who give blood by the gallon (offending their daughter''s religious principles); we meet Gerald Creedy who only loves three beings - his twin brother, Harold, and his two tortoises, Percy and Bysshe - and the mysterious lodger Madame Alphonsine who has the strange powers to make things (including tortoises) disappear; and then there is the rather arrogant bestselling novelist who gives a reading at a women''s bookshop only to find, to her horror, that two of her old schoolfriends are in the audience.

FROM THE AUTHOR SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE (1996) AND THE WHITBREAD PRIZE (2003)''The Mackay vision . . . as rich in history and wonder as a plain Victorian terrace house'' GUARDIAN ''A national treasure . . . She has achieved that rarest of things for a writer'' DAILY TELEGRAPH''A highly original talent'' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT The young Luke Ribbons, a vicar''s son and lately a guest of Her Majesty, arrives into the rackety Slattery household as a lodger, and falls irrevocably in love with redoubtable and beautiful Pearl, mother of four and grandmother. Pearl, balanced between respectability and ruin and bruised by her baroque past, is unwilling, to his despair, to distinguish him from the throng of dispossessed youth trooping through her household. Luke enlists the services of the local, highly respectable and provincial witch doctor, but things don''t go quite as he had planned . . .

FROM THE AUTHOR SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE (1996) AND THE WHITBREAD PRIZE (2003)''A national treasure . . . She has achieved that rarest of things for a writer'' DAILY TELEGRAPH''Shena Mackay notices a London that passes most writers by . . . '' PAUL BAILEY, INDEPENDENT ''She writes like an angel wielding a scalpel'' GUARDIAN New Zealand, 1909. After weeks at sea the new minister, Jack Mackenzie, arrives from Scotland with his unhappy wife and children in tow. A keen naturalist, he is more enthralled by the botanical - and carnal - delights of Dunedin than in the wellbeing of his flock. In London, eighty years later, Jack Mackenzie''s descendants are middle-aged, searching for a way out of their loneliness. Olive, embittered with her loveless life, steals a baby from a crowded tube; William, distraught at the death of a pupil, abandons his job as headmaster and struggles to fill his empty days. Jay Pascal, a young New Zealand vagrant of mysterious parentage arrives in London, looking for a place where he might belong.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE (1996) ''The Orchard on Fire is probably Mackay''s most perfect book'' PHILIP HENSHER, GUARDIAN ''A bitter-sweet, gentle novel, not given to grandstanding or preaching'' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT ''Shena Mackay has brought off something quite rare'' ANITA BROOKNER, SPECTATOR ''What made the orchard miraculous was an abandoned railway carriage, set down as if by magic, its wheels gone, anchored by long grass and nettles. Ruby and I stared at it and each other . . . dark-windowed, out of place in a thicket of thorns, it was the perfect hide-out, house, the camp of our dreams''When April''s parents move from London to rural Kent she makes her first best friend. With flame-haired, fearless Ruby, April shares secrets, dares and laughter. But Ruby has secrets of her own - bruises that she hides.Also seeking April''s friendship is old Mr Greenidge, immaculate in his linen suit, with eyes like blue glass. He follows her around the village with his beguiling dachshund, and wants to learn everything about her.

FROM THE AUTHOR SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE (1996) AND THE WHITBREAD PRIZE (2003)''[Her] prose is a joy to read'' MICHAEL ARDITTI, INDEPENDENT ''This is a vicious little book, and thus all the more enjoyable'' PAUL BAUMANN, NEW YORK TIMES ''A . . . funny, and ultimately moving'' KIRKUS REVIEWS The Artist''s Widow is the story of the good, the bad and the untalented. It begins on a hot August evening in Mayfair, at a private viewing of the ''Last Paintings'' of John Crane. Among those present are Crane''s widow, Lyris, also a painter; her friend Clovis Ingram, a middle-aged bookseller; Zoe, a beautiful young television filmmaker; and Lyris''s great-nephew Nathan Pursey, a boorish young conceptual artist. None of them realises that the evening will change their lives forever.The Artist''s Widow is a novel about the nature of the artistic impulse - about friendship, betrayal, courage and cowardice. It is also a London novel, exploring the mental and physical geography of the city in all its variety.