Twelve - Softcover
How should a young woman live now? Lily is waiting, as ever, for the weekend, waiting to get out of the city, waiting for that ever-elusive life-defining, climactic episode, the one that will 'explain to me everything that's gone before, and everything that's to come'. She's been friends with the decisive Edward and the freewheeling Josh for years, and makes what progress she does by clinging on to them. She seeks a narrative for her life, a story to dress in, and embarks on a daring, blind romance that begins on a train with the mysterious Colin, but just as swiftly talks herself out of it, out of commitment. Meanwhile, next door, Shirley, a plainer, simpler woman just gets on with things, caring for home, husband and baby, making strides, repeating cycles. Will Lily reach her epiphany? Will she recognize it when it arrives? Will it really change her life? Does she even need one? This sensitive, subtle novel is set to become something emblematic, magnetic to a certain kind of urban, reflective young woman reader.
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About the Author:
vanessa jones was born in 1970. This is her first book. `A thoroughly intriguing novel studded with thoughtful and witty insights: I've never read a book before that contains both ecstasy tips and gardening tips. Jones' writing is measured and elegant, but there is an underlying panic here at the ridiculous business of being alive.' Arthur Smith `Vanessa Jones frequently gives us passages of virtuoso writing. Comparisons can be invidious, but Twelve could be seen as a book narrated by a more intelligent, self-aware and literary Bridget Jones, with the journals of some of her close friends thrown in.' Peter Carty, Time Out
From Booklist:
The dullness of repetition and nonimaginative yearnings define the complacency that permeates the lives of the aimless young Brits in Jones' debut novel. Though seemingly well-employed and decently housed with a nice enough housemate, Lily, her protagonist, can't seem to shake her restlessness long enough to decide on a general direction for her adulthood, let alone a specific one. She wonders when she started to identify with the company employing her so much that she thinks of herself and it as "we." Passively, she goes though the surface motions of living as though rehearsing for the real thing, waiting for some recognizably decisive incident to give her past clarity and her future a roadmap providing the direction and purpose she lacks. This ennui verging on anomie is prevalent in a number of recent writings about bright, thirtyish Brits. Can this be the result of England's post-Thatcher stable growth, where good jobs and comfortable lives are taken for granted? Where did the rebellion and passion go? Whatever happened to England's beautiful Angry Young Men? Whitney Scott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherFlamingo
- Publication date2000
- ISBN 10 0002259427
- ISBN 13 9780002259422
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages169
- Rating
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