Artist, lover, wife, mother: can one woman be them all? Born in 1924, Jennet Mallow grew up with a disillusioned mother and a father haunted by memories of war. But Jennet has a talent - and a passion - for art. When she meets the handsome painter David Heaton they begin a tempestuous affair which takes them from the dank terraces of London to a bohemian artistic community in St Ives. But as Jennet's career flourishes, her relationship with David suffers - with potentially tragic consequences...
London. December 1981. The IRA is on the attack, a cold war is being waged, another war is just over the horizon, and Stephen Donaldson spends his days listening. When he first joined the Institute, he expected to encounter glamorous, high-risk espionage. Instead he gets the tape-recorded conversations of ancient Communists and ineffectual revolutionaries-until the day he is assigned a new case: the ultra-secret PHOENIX, a suspected internal leak. The monotony of Stephen's routine is broken, but it's not PHOENIX who captures his imagination: it's the target's wife, Helen. Beset by isolation and loneliness, Stephen becomes dangerously obsessed with Helen, risking his job to keep his fragile connection to her and inadvertently setting himself up for a fall that will forever change his life. With compassion and tenderness and moments of unexpected humor, Francesca Kay charts the way in which imagination, projection, and desire overwhelm the paucity of Stephen's life and identity. As beautiful as it is intense, The Long Room explores a mind under pressure and the wilder cravings of the heart.
What happens to a man who has his ear pressed to the lives of others but not much life of his own? When Stephen Donaldson joins The Institute, he anticipates excitement, romance and new status. This becomes a reality when he is assigned a new case: PHOENIX, in which he becomes mesmerized by the voice of the target's wife. Dangerously in love and very lonely, Stephen sets himself up for a vertiginous fall that will forever change his life.
A profound novel about the nature of faith and motherhood that "begins as the small mystery of one woman's vision (or delusion) and explodes into a deeper story" (The Washington Post).
Mary-Margaret O'Reilly is seemingly a harmless enough young woman, ready and willing to help out Father Diamond in the Sacred Heart church in Battersea. She may not be very bright, and she is sadly overweight, but she can certainly clean, and is very good with children.
It is the statue of Jesus on the cross Mary-Margaret is especially drawn to, and one day she decides to give Him a thorough and loving cleansing. But then moments later she lies unconscious, a great gash in her head, blood on the floor. Word gets out that she has witnessed a miracle and soon a full-scale religious mania descends on the quiet church, and everyone, from Father Diamond to his small but loyal band of parishioners, is affected by it. After recovering, Mary-Margaret returns to the church, and obsessively, back to the statue of Jesus. He has told her things, things she must act on, and urgently. The act she decides on is a shocking one, making The Translation of the Bones a riveting story of passion gone tragically wrong.
