HUMAN CROQUET.**

UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn. VG+/NFINE. No owner inscrptn and no price-clip to dw/dj.Bright,crisp,clean, glossy laminated,wrap-around montage'd,colour illustrations illustrated dw/dj panels,with white lettering; with negligible shelf-wear or creasing to edges and corners - no major nicks or tears present. Rear panel of dw/dj with minor superficial scoring/indents with a tiny pinprick and light superficial penetration to board beneath,spine/backstrip appears to be without inevitable sunning/fading.Top edges lightly toned with light dust-soiling flecking spots, fore-edges also slightly toned with some minimal blemishes and foxing/spotting; contents bright,tight, clean,solid and sound - pristine - no dog-ear reading creases to any pages' corners,appears unread - apart from my own collation.Publisher's bright,crisp,clean, sharp-cornered,original plain tan/knaki cloth boards with bright,crisp,blocked gilt letters to spine/backstrip and immaculate plain dark green endpapers.UK,8vo HB+dw/dj,1st edn,11-349pp [paginated] includes b/w illustration to last page; plus [unpaginated] half-title+ title pages,a dedication,an epigraph,and sections' separator pages. Author's 2nd book following on from 'Behind the Scenes at the Museum',her highly acclaimed and award-winning (Whitbread Book of the Year') debut novel.
Want more Kate ATKINSON titles? For similar and other titles, please search my MODERN FIRSTS2 catalogue. Once it had been the great forest of Lythe - a vast and impenetrable thicket of green with a mystery in the very heart of the trees.And here, in the beginning,lived the Fairfaxes,grandly,at Fairfax Manor, visited once by the great Gloriana herself.But over the centuries the forest had been destroyed,replaced by Strrets of Trees - Chestnut Avenue, Laurel Bank, Sycamore Street,and all that was left was Boscrambe Woods and the great Lady Oak.The Fairfaxes had dwindled too; now they lived in 'Arden' at the end of Hawthorne Close and were hardly a family at all.There was Vinny (the Aunt from Hell),irritating and irritable - 'Fun doesn't get the washing done' - with her cats and her crab-apple face.And Gordon,who had forgotten them for seven years and, when he remembered,came back with fat Debbie,who shared her one brain cell with a poodle and had something wrong with her tubes.And then there were Charles and Isobel,the children.Charles,the acne-scarred Lost Boy,passed his life awaiting visits from aliens and the return of his mother.But it is Isobel to whom the story belongs - Isobel,born on the Streets of the Trees in the muddled middle of the twentieth century, drops into pockets of time and out again.Isobel is sixteen and she too is waiting for the return of her mother - the thin,dangerous Eliza with her scent of nicotine, Arperge and sex,whose disappearance is part of the mystery that still remains at the heart of the forest. Kate Atkinson's first novel 'Behind the Scenes at the Museum' won the Whitbread First Novel Award,and then was chosen as the overall 1995 Whitbread Book of the Year.Her new book is an audacious blend of history,comedy and tragedy,drawing on Shakespeare and the place of the forest in the imagination,distilled through the lives of an eccentric suburban family. 'Human Croquet' confirms Kate Atkinson as an outstanding writer of lyrical prose,and as a unique new voice in British fiction. See also,my book ID rja464: a UK,8vo p/b,wraps, Uncorrected Proof, MINT - unread.This is her second novel - her debut,'Behind the Scenes in the Museum', in 1995 - see my book ID rja695917 was highly acclaimed. Please contact seller,for correct shipping/P+p quotes - particularly ALL overseas buyers - BEFORE ordering through the order page!
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