The Second World War looms and young, curious Cecily desperately wants to know her 16-year old sister’s secret. But there is a lot more she wants to know too. Why is her mother’s sister, Kitty, always staying on their Suffolk farm? Who is the sinister stranger Robert Wilson? Where does her sister go as she climbs out of her window at night? Then her charred remains are found on the burnt out pier and strangely Cecily feels it is somehow her fault. The poetic narrative flits between past, present and future most effectively. The lyrical prose allows the reader to feel the tension and dismay building up to the approaching war. We also follow an Italian family who own the local ice-cream parlour and their fears of the future. The plot is full of secrets which Cecily tries to uncover with devastating results. Highly recommended.
With 'tension [that] grips like a vice' [The Independent], The Last Pier is a gripping drama of dark family secrets in rural England from the author of Brixton Beach, Bone China and Mosquito.
'Tearne charts the patterns of love and loss with beautiful prose' Sunday Times
Despite the dark clouds of war looming on the horizon, thirteen-year-old Cecily's head is full of first love, ice cream and sibling rivalry. She looks constantly to her impossibly beautiful elder sister, Rose, with a mixture of envy and admiration. Desperately curious about Rose's secrets, and those of all the adults around her, Cecily eavesdrops at every opportunity that summer: with dire consequences. For Cecily's actions one fateful night at the outbreak of the Second World War will ultimately tear her family apart and echo across the generations. It is not until many years later that a grown-up Cecily can return to her childhood home and unravel the remaining family secrets. And finally lay some ghosts to rest.
'Tearne charts the patterns of love and loss with beautiful prose The Sunday Times
'A tender, unconventional love story unfolds, until tragedy intervenes... she has a wonderful ability to create atmosphere' The Times
'Beautifully atmospheric writing, deeply moving and thought-provoking' Books Quarterly (Waterstones)
Author
About Roma Tearne
Roma Tearne is a Sri Lankan born novelist and film maker living in the UK. She left Sri Lanka with her family, at the start of the civil unrest during the 1960s. She trained as a painter & filmmaker at the Ruskin School of Fine Art, Oxford and then was Leverhulme artist in residence at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Subsequently she was awarded an AHRC Fellowship and worked for three years in museums around Europe on a project accessing narrative within the collections.
She has written six novels. Her fifth, The Road To Urbino was published by Little Brown in June 2012 to coincide with the premier of her film of that name at the National Gallery in London. She has been short-listed for the Costa, the Kirimaya & LA Times book prize and long-listed for the Orange Prize in 2011 and, in 2012, the Asian Man Booker. Her sixth novel, The Last Pier, will be out in April 2015 from Hesperus Press.
