Book description
A sweepingly epic and gloriously intimate commercial debut - a
beautiful and haunting story of lost innocence and a powerful, enduring
love. Clarissa is almost seventeen when the spell of her childhood is
broken. It is 1914, the beginning of a blissful, golden summer - and the
end of an era. Deyning Park is in its heyday, the large country house
filled with the laughter and excitement of privileged youth preparing
for a weekend party. When Clarissa meets Tom Cuthbert, home from
university and staying with his mother, the housekeeper, she is dazzled.
Tom is handsome and enigmatic; he is also an outsider. Ambitious,
clever, his sights set on a career in law, Tom is an acute observer, and
a man who knows what he wants. For now, that is Clarissa. As Tom and
Clarissa's friendship deepens, the wider landscape of political life
around them is changing, and soon the world - and all that they know -
is rocked irrevocably by a war that changes their lives for ever. 'A
sumptuous, absorbing tale of love in time of war. Judith Kinghorn's
novel brilliantly illuminates the experiences of a generation of
blighted youth' Judith Kinghorn was born in Northumberland and lives
in Hampshire. THE LAST SUMMER is her first novel.
