Kirjahaku

Born on D-Day, Shena Mackay's life began with euphoria - had the nurses had their way, her name would have been Deeday. In this funny, celebratory and heart-felt memoir, she takes specific dates (not always one of national or international importance) and explores its significance to her. We share her experience of watching the Coronation on a tiny screen in the darkened room of a village vicarage, listen in on the phone call with her daughter in New York when the second plane went into the Twin Towers, and drink whisky from bone china cups and saucers in David Hockney's studio in Rachman's Notting Hill. The memoir is packed with significant - and surreal - milestones, from her life in Earls Court and Soho in the early sixties to more recent events, leaving a beautiful exhibition by a Sussex artist at the Towner gallery, to find Eastbourne pier was in flames. Shena Mackay's memoir is a beautiful and delicate impression of a lifetime, and a joy to read.

Here is a wonderful collection of short stories by the writer known for 'the Mackay vision, suburban - as kitsch, as unexceptional, and yet as rich in history and wonder as a plain Victorian terrace house, its threshold radiant with tiling and stained-glass birds of paradise encased in leaded lights' - Guardian.Shena Mackay, who first came to fame before the age of twenty with two novellas, is the doyenne of the short form. In this volume of previously uncollected stories - including those read on radio - she constantly surprises with a view of the ordinary world that is not at all ordinary.A grasshopper determinedly takes up residence on a bathroom ceiling; a gecko hiding in a cupboard brings a strange sort of luck; a woman spies from a distance two older women friends after many long years and a memory of how they gallopedin the playground as Starlight Blaze and Pepperpot plays sweetly, suddenly in her mind; pigs are swaddled in blankets, looking like babies in shawls; luggage is packed with youthful hopes and ideals.She observes how people rub along and reveals the best and worst of us all: a disgruntled schoolboy and his hapless teacher conquer mountains and their antipathy for each other; a girl with green eyes and iridescent hair discovers revenge; a race to be the best mushroom-picker creates only losers; and rotten apples, in the right pair of hands, make a loving pie. Shena Mackay is a generous and keen-eyed chronicler of the everyday; she deftly brings wisdom and humour to the worlds she creates, worlds that we suddenly, excitingly see anew. She is an utterly original writer.

Here is a wonderful collection of short stories by the writer known for 'the Mackay vision, suburban - as kitsch, as unexceptional, and yet as rich in history and wonder as a plain Victorian terrace house, its threshold radiant with tiling and stained-glass birds of paradise encased in leaded lights' - Guardian.Shena Mackay, who first came to fame before the age of twenty with two novellas, is the doyenne of the short form. In this volume of previously uncollected stories - including those read on radio - she constantly surprises with a view of the ordinary world that is not at all ordinary.A grasshopper determinedly takes up residence on a bathroom ceiling; a gecko hiding in a cupboard brings a strange sort of luck; a woman spies from a distance two older women friends after many long years and a memory of how they gallopedin the playground as Starlight Blaze and Pepperpot plays sweetly, suddenly in her mind; pigs are swaddled in blankets, looking like babies in shawls; luggage is packed with youthful hopes and ideals.She observes how people rub along and reveals the best and worst of us all: a disgruntled schoolboy and his hapless teacher conquer mountains and their antipathy for each other; a girl with green eyes and iridescent hair discovers revenge; a race to be the best mushroom-picker creates only losers; and rotten apples, in the right pair of hands, make a loving pie. Shena Mackay is a generous and keen-eyed chronicler of the everyday; she deftly brings wisdom and humour to the worlds she creates, worlds that we suddenly, excitingly see anew. She is an utterly original writer.

One of Shena Mackay's most acclaimed novels. A story of long consequences, betrayal, dark humour and redemption.

Many regard this as Mackay's masterpiece. A touching, funny novel about childhood in the 1950s: friendship, village life and lost innocence.

Never were there such devoted sisters...or so the song would have it. Though some may be inseparable, for others the relationship arouses intense, tangled emotions. Louisa May Alcott, Mary Flanagan, Janet Frame, Elizabeth Gaskell, Georgina Hammick, Elizabeth Jolley, Katherine Mansfield and Edna O'Brien are among the prestigious writers who unravel this intricate bond.Stories that reveal remarkable allegiances and private codes are counterpointed by those of sisters pitched against one another in battles for parental affection or sibling supremacy. Here are sisters who lose one another to lovers or to marriage, and one who chooses her sister in favour of a husband...Rivalry, companionship, love and dislike feature in a collection that exposes the innermost secrets of family life. As delightful, surprising - and sometimes disturbing - as the ties they explore, these stories are essential reading.