Book description
Lucy's trouble is that the exercise of her ambition is trammelled by
the letter, though not the spirit, of such contemporary morality as has
been distilled to her. Quite intelligent and attractive enough to get on
under her own steam, her desire to live in a manner she is not
accustomed to and her fascinated preoccupation with the 'marvellous
secret society' of rich and educated people, side-track her into some
very false moves, such as her marriage with the unspeakable Jebb. With
good writing, exact observation and easy invention, Nina Bawden provides
a cool and humorous commentary on society as it was. Nina Bawden was
one of Britain's most distinguished and best-loved novelists for both
adults and young people. Several of her novels for children - Carrie's
War, a Phoenix Award winner in 1993; The Peppermint Pig, which won the
Guardian Fiction Award; The Runaway Summer; and Keeping Henry - have
become contemporary classics. She wrote over forty novels, slightly more
than half of which are for adults, an autobiography and a memoir
describing her experiences during and following the Potters Bar rail
crash in May 2002, which killed her husband, Austen Kark, and from which
she emerged seriously injured - but fighting. She was shortlisted for
the 1987 Man Booker Prize for Circles of Deceit and several of her
books, like Family Money (1991), have been adapted for film or
television. Many of her works have been translated into numerous
languages. Born in London in 1925, Nina studied Philosophy, Politics and
Economics at Oxford University in the same year as Margaret Thatcher.
Following Potter's Bar, she was movingly portrayed as a character in the
David Hare play, The Permanent Way, about the privatization of the
British railways. She received the prestigious S T Dupont Golden Pen
Award for a lifetime's contribution to literature in 2004, and in 2010
The Birds on the Trees was shortlisted for the Lost Booker of 1970.
Bawden passed away on Wednesday 22 August 2012, at her home in North
London with her family around her.
