Little Rattle in the Air - Softcover

Oldham, June

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1853811521 ISBN 13: 9781853811524

Publisher: Virago Pr, 1990

Northam is a Midlands town. Nora wants to help with a community play, but behind her whim lies a longing to recover her past. The playwright wants to celebrate the unsung lives of the town, but the townspeople reveal reticence often larded with hostility. The author also wrote "Enter Tom".

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From Publishers Weekly:

This 19th-century-style novel is quietly dramatic though slow to get started. Nora, married and financially secure, returns to the Midlands factory town of her childhood. Physically decaying, mediocre in spirit, Neatham has been left behind and wants to stay that way. Nora comes ostensibly to help gather material for a play based on the town's history, but her real motive is to end her feeling of alienation by reexamining memories of a childhood spent in the stifling atmosphere of Neatham. ``I don't think nostalgia is quite the word for it,'' she quips, while thinking, ``I have something more acute . . . a sense of loss.'' But the townspeople, including her meddlesome landlady and the manipulative Dick, an influential member of the community arts council sponsoring the play, resist Nora's investigation into their private lives and into events such as a decades-old beauty contest. Not only does Dick frustrate Nora's research, but he also toys with her emotions as the two have a disappointing affair. The mystery and suspense ring true, and Oldham ( Enter Tom ) adroitly reveals her characters through their witty verbal exchanges and increasingly desperate actions.

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