Book description
Gavin and Hannah Eastwood are on holiday with their small son, Giles,
in Belgium. Secure, prosaic, a little complacent perhaps, but generous,
kind and very sensible about their over-protective feelings for their
son. The holiday is interrupted by Melissa, a student of Gavin's, so
infatuated by him that she has followed the Eastwoods to Begium - her
presence brings the predictable amount of irritation and embarrassment
that teenagers in love with older, married men usually do. An appalling
tragedy ensues. But it is not what you might expect.
Pamela Hansford Johnson wrote 27 novels across genres as diverse as
romance, comedy and tragedy. An incredibly readable and literary author,
who deserves to be rediscovered by a new generation, Bello has brought
18 of Johnson's books back into print.
'In its unity of time, place and action, the novel achieves a strangely
magnified effect, an intensity that grows with each plain unintense
statement' Financial Times
Pamela Hansford Johnson was born in 1912 and gained recognition with
her first novel, This Bed Thy Centre, published in 1935. She wrote 27
novels. Her themes centred on the moral responsibility of the individual
in their personal and social relations. The fictional genres she used
ranged from romantic comedy (Night and Silence, Who Is Here) and high
comedy (The Unspeakable Skipton) to tragedy (The Holiday Friend) and the
psychological study of cruelty (An Error of Judgement). Her last novel,
A Bonfire, was published in the year of her death, 1981. She was a
critic as well as a novelist and wrote books on Thomas Wolfe and Ivy
Compton-Burnett; Six Proust Reconstructions (1958) confirmed her
reputation as a leading Proustian scholar. She also wrote a play,
Corinth House (1954), a work of social criticism arising out of the
Moors Trial, On Iniquity (1967), and a book of essays, Important to Me
(1974). She received honorary degrees from six universities and was a
Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. She was awarded the C. B.E.
in 1975. Pamela Hansford Johnson, who had two children by her first
marriage with journalist Gordon Neil Stewart, later married C. P. Snow.
Their son Philip was born in 1952.
