Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
Abeautiful, atmospheric novel about family, love, loss, and regret by a critically acclaimed author "How deep the summer had bitten into the land that last August, how cruelly it had burnt into earth and grass and air. What had started out as a pastel and water-faded spring turning so unexpectedly into a splintering, shimmering thing. All that had been required was a spark to cause a fire. Why had no one noticed?" The summer of 1939 broke the Maudsley family. Cecily was only13-years-old and desperate to grow up; desperate to be as beautiful and desired and reckless as her older sister Rose. Now, in her 40s, the family resemblance is uncanny, but Cecily is a shadow of her former self. A part of her died that fateful summer. Returning to the deserted family farm as an adult, Cecily recalls the light before the storm, before the war came and before the terrible family tragedy. It was a summer of laughter and ice cream, promises and first love. She remembers her father s unrequited love for her, her melancholy mother, and her brittle and argumentative aunt Kitty, and how everyone, somehow, was guarding a secret. None more so than the impossibly beautiful Rose. And in her childhood innocence, between snatches of misunderstood conversations, Cecily helps set in motion a chain of devastating events. Wandering through the family home29 years later, Cecily hopes to lay some ghosts to rest but the past has yet to give up some shocking secrets."
Synopsis
With 'tension that] grips like a vice' The Independent], The Last Pier is a gripping drama of dark family secrets in rural England from the author of Brixton Beach, Bone China and Mosquito.
'Tearne charts the patterns of love and loss with beautiful prose' Sunday Times
Despite the dark clouds of war looming on the horizon, thirteen-year-old Cecily's head is full of first love, ice cream and sibling rivalry. She looks constantly to her impossibly beautiful elder sister, Rose, with a mixture of envy and admiration. Desperately curious about Rose's secrets, and those of all the adults around her, Cecily eavesdrops at every opportunity that summer: with dire consequences. For Cecily's actions one fateful night at the outbreak of the Second World War will ultimately tear her family apart and echo across the generations. It is not until many years later that a grown-up Cecily can return to her childhood home and unravel the remaining family secrets. And finally lay some ghosts to rest.