From the bestselling author of The Lie, and Exposure
Helen Dunmore was an award-winning novelist, children's author and poet who will be remembered for the depth and breadth of her fiction. Rich and intricate, yet narrated with a deceptive simplicity that made all of her work accessible and heartfelt, her writing stood out for the fluidity and lyricism of her prose, and her extraordinary ability to capture the presence of the past. Her first novel, Zennor in Darkness, explored the events which led D. H. Lawrence to be expelled from Cornwall on suspicion of spying, and won the McKitterick Prize. Her third novel, A Spell of Winter, won the inaugural Orange Prize for Fiction in 1996, and she went on to become a Sunday Times bestseller with The Siege, which was described by Antony Beevor as a 'world-class novel' and was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel of the Year and the Orange Prize. Published in 2010, her eleventh novel, The Betrayal, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and The Lie in 2014 was shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction and the 2015 RSL Ondaatje Prize. Her final novel, Birdcage Walk, deals with legacy and recognition - what writers, especially women writers, can expect to leave behind them - and was described by the Observer as 'the finest novel Helen Dunmore has written'. Helen was known to be an inspirational and generous author, championing emerging voices and other established authors. She also gave a large amount of her time to supporting literature, independent bookshops all over the UK, and arts organisations across the world. She died in June 2017.
This is the finest novel Helen Dunmore has written ... From the
start, Birdcage Walk has the command of a thriller … The novel’s
cast is marvellous and vivid … A novel that deserves to be
cherished and to last.
*Observer*
This powerful novel is a fine final flourish from a gifted writer …
The power Dunmore gives to lowly female lives is inescapably
moving, their stories taking us on a remarkable journey into the
visceral heart of the female experience in Georgian Britain …
[Dunmore is] one of the bravest and most versatile writers of her
generation … This fine, fiery novel will surely be remembered as
one of her best.
*The Times*
Like many of Dunmore’s novels, Birdcage Walk defies categorisation
... a blend of beauty and horror evoked with such breath-taking
poetry that it haunts me still ... she has an extraordinary gift
for taking the ordinary and familiar and rendering them new. When
Tredevant’s growing unpredictability once more tightens the
narrative, forcing the story back into the ominous and unsettling
territory where it first began, it is easy to see why [Dunmore] has
earned a place among the finest writers of historical fiction
working today.
*Guardian*
Helen Dunmore’s quietly brilliant historical novels are among the
best fiction of our time.
*Daily Telegraph*
A finely wrought psychological thriller … But it’s ultimately a
novel about the ways in which we remember and, as such, a fitting
contribution to Dunmore’s extraordinary legacy.
*Daily Mail*
Elegant prose and brilliantly researched historical detail … a
devastatingly good novel.
*Sunday Express, S Magazine*
Part psychological thriller, part poetic exhumation of the past,
it’s a fiery, first-rate historical novel from an author who’ll be
much missed
*Mail on Sunday, Summer Reads*
A firecracker of a historical murder mystery story with which to
leave her many admirers
*Guardian, Readers Books of the Year*
Dunmore is skilled at claiming the huge canvasses of history and
painting upon them exquisitely detailed human tragedies … Every
scene is saturated with vivid period detail but Dunmore’s touch is
feather-light.
*Financial Times*
A very good novel indeed
*Scotsman, Books of the Year*
Dunmore just writes so effortlessly. Birdcage Walk is a joy to
read.
*Stylist*
Marvellous … Dunmore has the ability to evoke a sense of place and
to write passages of thrilling and disturbing action … Dunmore is a
remarkable novelist who sets herself very different challenges in
each new novel. She meets this one triumphantly. It will surely be
a great and thoroughly deserved success.
*Scotsman*
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