Book description
Wry and poignant, this quirky novel is about resilience and defiance in
the face of loss. The Wedding at Bueno-Vista takes us into the world of
Elaine Frobisher, a woman who makes herself invisible to those who wish
her well, but too visible and vulnerable to those who wish her ill.
Recently widowed and terrorised by burglars, she flees to an anonymous
apartment block and, for protection, sets about inventing a marriage
with an imaginary husband. Shonagh Koea s notable writing career met
with early success in a Woman s Weekly writing contest, in which (aged
eight) she won two guineas. She went on to become a journalist and to
win the Air New Zealand Short Story Award (1981), and more recently to
write three short story collections as well as seven novels. Of the
novels, Sing to Me, Dreamer was a finalist in the New Zealand Book
Awards (1995) and The Lonely Margins of the Sea was runner-up for the
Deutz Medal for Fiction (1999). Shonagh Koea has also held the
University of Auckland Fellowship in Literature (1993) and the Buddle
Findlay Sargeson Fellowship (1997). Her most recent book is her 'kitchen
memoir', The Kindness of Strangers.
