Morag Joss began writing in 1997 after her first short story won a prize in a national competition. She is the author of a series set in Bath: Funeral Music, Fearful Symmetry and Fruitful Bodies, and of Half Broken Things, which won the Crime Writers' Association Silver Dagger Award. Morag Joss lives in the countryside, near Bath.
'This book is a triumphant performance. People will be standing to applaud ... She displays an astonishing insight into the darker recesses of the human soul ... After I finished this book I found it hard to sleep, so deep was my disquiet at the gathering horror of the narrative and the subtle way in which Joss makes the reader complicit through inevitable sympathy with the damaged ones. Her confidence in handling shifts of narrative, the unobtrusively fine descriptions of the natural world, and uncanny gift for dialogue and, above all, a forensic ability to deconstruct psychological disintegration, combine to make a work of fiction that sets its author on the path to greatness.' - -- Bel Mooney, The Times 'A fascinating moral exercise as well as a gripping novel' -- Scotland on Sunday 'HALF BROKEN THINGSis sad, funny, original and wise' -- The Literary Review 'Well written and well plotted, with a good Bath background' -- Evening Standard 'Morag Joss gets better with each book.' -- Donna Leon on Fruitful Bodies
'This book is a triumphant performance. People will be standing to applaud ... She displays an astonishing insight into the darker recesses of the human soul ... After I finished this book I found it hard to sleep, so deep was my disquiet at the gathering horror of the narrative and the subtle way in which Joss makes the reader complicit through inevitable sympathy with the damaged ones. Her confidence in handling shifts of narrative, the unobtrusively fine descriptions of the natural world, and uncanny gift for dialogue and, above all, a forensic ability to deconstruct psychological disintegration, combine to make a work of fiction that sets its author on the path to greatness.' - -- Bel Mooney, The Times 'A fascinating moral exercise as well as a gripping novel' -- Scotland on Sunday 'HALF BROKEN THINGSis sad, funny, original and wise' -- The Literary Review 'Well written and well plotted, with a good Bath background' -- Evening Standard 'Morag Joss gets better with each book.' -- Donna Leon on Fruitful Bodies
British suspense writer Joss (Funeral Music) won CWA's Silver Dagger Award for this novel about Jean, a housesitter being forced into retirement. With nothing to lose and nowhere to go, Jean moves into the master bedroom of the lovely Walden Manor, her final posting. She dons the owners' clothes, raids the wine cellar, and assembles an impromptu family that includes Michael, a petty criminal, and Steph, a pregnant woman searching for a place to belong. Joss does a credible job of showing how Jean and her guests at Walden Manor find a sense of community they've never before experienced. But then tension mounts as the owners' return draws ever closer and the interlopers become more desperately ensconced in their borrowed home. Jean pleads for understanding for herself and her fellow cohorts, but they are so cold-blooded in their pursuit of happiness that the reader may end up racing through the story as much to get away from these horrifying people as to find out what happens to them. Recommended where suspense fiction is in demand.-Jane la Plante, Minot State Univ. Lib., ND Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
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