Debatable Land - Hardcover

McWilliam, Candia

2.7

61 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385263104 ISBN 13: 9780385263108

Publisher: Nan A. Talese, 1995

View all copies of this ISBN edition:

Alec Dundas, a painter from Edinburgh; Logan Urquhart, a yacht skipper; and Elspeth, Logan's troubled second wife, visit the island colonies between Tahiti and New Zealand, and come to an understanding about their Scottish homeland

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.

Review:

A Pacific cruise from Tahiti to New Zealand aboard the Ardent Spirit brings together six people whose characters will only slowly emerge before a climactic storm scene near the end. Alec and Elspeth, both Scottish, as is Candia McWilliam, alternate in narration, each veering between current events and memory to reveal further layers of detail beneath the surface. A central image of a stuffed tortoise cut in half lengthwise by the taxidermist to serve as an instructional aid evokes the author's purpose. For her idiosyncratic and fresh use of language here, McWilliam won the 1994 Guardian Fiction Prize.

About the Author:

Candia McWilliam was born in Edinburgh. She is the author of A Case of Knives (1988), which won a Betty Trask Prize, A Little Stranger (1989), Debatable Land (1994), which was awarded the Guardian Fiction Prize and its Italian translation the Premio Grinzane Cavour for the best foreign novel of the year, and a collection of stories Wait Till I Tell You (1997). In 2006 she began to suffer from the effects of blepharospasm and became functionally blind as a result. In 2009 she underwent an operation which harvested tendons from her leg in order to enable her to open her eyelids.Her most recent book is her critically acclaimed memoir, What to Look for in Winter.

"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.