Book description
Late summer 1946: the Wash on the Fenland coast. Into a suspicious
and isolated community comes James Mercer, until recently a serving
captain in the Engineers, who is now employed in the demolition of
redundant gun platforms. A relationship grows between Mercer and the
wife and daughter of a soldier who is soon expected home - though he
is returning not from active service but from a sentence in military
gaol, and his arrival is awaited with anxiety.
Mercer also befriends Mathias, a German prisoner of war engaged in
similar work who has no wish to be repatriated; and Jacob, a Jew,
former glassmaker and camp survivor, of whose devastated journey to
this isolated place Mercer gradually learns. He learns, too, of the
bond between the German and the Jew and is drawn further into their
history as the ex-soldier finally returns and begins to re-establish
his overbearing authority.
In a place where nothing has changed for decades, the agents of
destruction and renewal are at work and everyone begins to search for
his or her piece of solid ground. As the summer dies, animosities
flare, prejudices and enmities are burnished and the six main
characters circle each other like the combatants they believe
themselves to be - each man or woman constrained by an intractable
moral code, the loss of which is unthinkable. And Mercer finds himself
caught in the centre as events quicken to their violent and unexpected conclusion.
In his powerful new novel, Edric captures with breathtaking economy
the sense of portent and uncertainty shared by a community in the
aftermath of conflict - a community for which peacetime is hardly any
different to wartime.
Robert Edric was born in 1956. His novels include Winter Garden (1985
James Tait Black Prize winner), A New Ice Age (1986 runner-up for the
Guardian Fiction Prize), A Lunar Eclipse, The Earth Made of Glass,
Elysium, In Desolate Heaven, The Sword Cabinet, The Book of the Heathen
(shortlisted for the 2001 WH Smith Literary Award) and Peacetime
(longlisted for the Booker Prize 2002). He is also the author of the
widely-acclaimed Song Cycle triology, which comprises Cradle Song, Siren
Song and Swan Song.
