26A - Brossura

Evans, Diana

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0385661223 ISBN 13: 9780385661225

Casa editrice: Anchor Canada, 2006

Riassunto

From a stunning new voice, a debut novel that, like Zadie Smith's White Teeth and Monica Ali's Brick Lane, confronts the multi-racial realities of modern Britain with humour, grace, and lyrical intensity.

Identical twins Georgia and Bessi live in the loft of 26 Waifer Avenue in Neasden, London. It is their place, one of strawberry-scented beanbag chair, a view of the apple trees, and very important decisions, and all visitors must knock on the door marked 26a before entering.

Downstairs is a less harmonious world: Ida, the twins’ Nigerian mother, puts cayenne pepper on Yorkshire pudding and can only assuage her bouts of desperate homesickness with five-hour baths and long conversations in Edo with her own absent mother; Aubrey, their Derbyshire-born father, shouts “Haddock!” in frustration with his house full of women, and angrily roams the streets of Neasden to escape his demons. Older sister Bel discovers sex, high heels, and organic hairdressing, and baby sister Kemy is obsessed with Michael Jackson. The twins plan their own flapjack empire as the ticket to a shining future for two.

But as Georgia and Bessi grow up, discovering the temptations and dangers of London in the 1980s and 90s, the realities of separateness and of solitude crowd in. Each must decide on her own path to adulthood and pursue it — and discover if she can face the future as only one.

Wickedly funny and devastatingly moving, 26a is part fairytale, part nightmare. It moves from the mundane to the magical, the particular to the universal with exceptional flair and imagination. It is for everyone who remembers their childhood, and anyone who knows what it is to lose it.
On the outside of their front door Georgia and Bessi had written in chalk ‘26a,’ and on the inside ‘G&B,’ at eye level, just above the handle. This was the extra dimension. The one after sight, sound, smell, touch and taste where the world multiplied and exploded because it was the sum of two people. Bright was twice as bright. All the colours were extra. Girls with umbrellas skipped across the wallpaper and Georgia and Bessi could hear them laughing.
—Excerpt from 26a
From the Hardcover edition.

Su questo libro

Recensione

Winner of the 2005 Orange Award for New Writers

“Rich and strange. . . . A funny, haunting, marvelous debut.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Beautifully written. . . . Evans’s true subject is at once more familiar and more exotic than England or Nigeria. She allows us a glimpse into the lost country of childhood, of which we have all been citizens and to which we can never return.”
—The New York Times

“A poignant and moving first novel. . . . Evans creates an intricate world that begins and ends in room 26a – a world that reveals the careful balance required to sustain an intimate universe of two.”
—The Globe and Mail

“Tender and evocative. . . . Sensual and poetic. . .powerful and uncompromising. . . . The lives of [Evans’] characters are governed by a quiet humour; her sensitivity to their perceptions creating unity in a narrative obsessed by halves and parts. . . . A mature, compelling and beautiful first novel.”
—TLS

“Marvellously written. . . . Rich with both ordinary and extraordinary realities.”
—The Seattle Times

“Enthralling from the first page, this bittersweet fusion of fairytales and nightmares is sugared by nostalgia and salted with sadness.”
—Daily Mail (UK)

L'autore

Diana Evans is a graduate of the University of East Anglia’s Creative Writing MA and has published short fiction in a number of anthologies. She has worked as a journalist and arts critic for several magazines in the United Kingdom, and writes regularly for the Independent and Stage. Evans lives in London.
From the Hardcover edition.

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Anchor Canada
• Data di pubblicazione: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0385661223
• ISBN 13: 9780385661225
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 304