The long afternoon - Hardcover

Giles Waterfield

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747272352 ISBN 13: 9780747272359

Publisher: Review, 2000

Synopsis

The Williamson's arrive on the French Riviera, find a home and start building a life of comfort though a shadow lies across their domestic utopia, not only in Henry's health but the European conflict. As the story unfolds, the marriage seems freighted with the seeds of its own destruction.

About this title

About the Author:

Giles Waterfield was brought up in Paris and Geneva. Having worked at the Royal Pavilion in Brighton and for sixteen years as Director of Dulwich Picture Gallery in London, in 1996 he abandoned arts administration in order to write, teach and curate exhibitions. This is his first novel.

Review:

'Giles Waterfield's exquisitely poised first novel THE LONG AFTERNOON is set in the Riviera resort of Menton between and during the world wars: luxe, calme et volupte interrupted by a quiet but resonant tragedy' Lucy Hughes Hallett in The Sunday Times ' Giles Waterfield,formerly Director of the Dulwich Picture Gallery took the McKitterick with his troubling,unsentimental elegy.for an English family living on the French Riviera . . . This year's McKitterick and Sagittarius contenders included names already eminent in neighbouring fields: the poet and journalist Blake Morrison; the academic and short-story writer, Jane Stevenson; the former Beiruit hostage and memoirist Brian Keenan; and the journalist Brian Clarke' Boyd Tonkin, Independent 'Extraordinary first novel' Express (in round-up of hottest reads for the summer) 'This is a beautiful book based on Waterfield's grandparents. He writes with a clarity sweetened with kindness about their fear and confusion and about their flaws of character that rendered them unable to survive the changes forced upon them.' the Times `Waterfield has captured to perfection the languid, leisured expat lifestyle... culminating in a terrible, haunting, unexpected ending' Daily Mail 'elegantly understated style... gentle and humane' Guardian 'This haunting first novel is a study of marriage, love and fear. An almost perfect period piece' Express 'Like an Anita Brookner story, Giles Waterfield's first novel describes a complete emotional world lived out in claustrophobic surroundings. This beguilingly old-fashioned novel ... Like all good period pieces, Waterfield evokes the allure of a vanished life-style, while exposing its more ludicrous excesses' Independent

About this edition

• Publisher: Review
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0747272352
• ISBN 13: 9780747272359
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 247