Book description
'I can't live with guilt, and I have felt guilty enough to die . . .'
Writer Christine Hall's own loving relationships and empathetic
intelligence make her the perfect confidante for a group of friends:
architect Eric Aveling - whose wife Lois is dying, Junius Evans,
Aveling's flamboyant business partner, and, above all, eccentric,
impulsive Celia Baird. When death forces a realignment of relationships
within the group even the perceptive Christine is not prepared for the
final outcome.
Moving between London and a south coast seaside town, The Last Resort
is a sensitive and vividly human exploration of the hidden side of
marriage, where dark undercurrents of duty, guilt, secrecy and
loneliness can all play a part in deviating the course of love and
influencing the choices that life thrusts upon us.
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. 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.
