Bøger af Ann Schlee

On a Victorian pleasure cruise, a chance encounter opens the floodgates to regret, desire, and possibility in this “little period gem of feeling and clarity” (The Guardian).It is 1851, only three years since Europe was convulsed by workers’ revolutions, but already English tourists are returning to the Continent, taking the waters at Baden Baden, then traveling by paddle steamer down the Rhine valley, celebrated for its romantic vistas. Among the sightseers are the pious Reverend Charles Morrison, his wife and daughter, and his maiden sister, Charlotte, a seemingly meek middle-aged woman who’s spent her life attending to the needs of others. Like the river upon which they’re traveling, however, Charlotte contains hidden depths. A chance encounter with a fellow passenger in Coblenz sparks a Damascene moment, unleashing in her a sudden and violent awakening of memory, fear, and sexual desire. As the travelers are swept onward to Cologne, Charlotte wrestles with what Lauren Groff in her foreword to this new edition describes as “a subtle and total derangement of understanding,” eventually surging toward a moment of crisis. Rhine Journey is “a patient and cunning representation of the intimacies of a repressed and wasted life” (London Review of Books) by a novelist “incapable of writing a bad or inelegant sentence” (Hudson Review).

Untouched by the ravages of war and the politically volatile atmosphere, the Villa della Pace remains an island of European society in the tiny British Protectorate of Aderra. Its circle religiously maintain their rigid social calendar and allow nothing, save the death of King George VI, to interfere with their pleasures. But the flawless surface of their lives conceals a turmoil of deception and desire . . .Flo has just left school in England and is flying out to spend the summer with her mother Lydia, and step-father Harry, who, as head of the British Administration, must oversee the forthcoming handover to indigenous rule. Lydia is determined that this year Flo will have the summer of her life, just as she herself did years earlier in Nairobi. And believing she can relive her youth through unworldly Flo, Lydia devises a plan for her daughter's social debut - even providing a man. But she little suspects the intensity of emotion behind Flo's quiet façade, nor the irrevocable impact her presence will have on the whole community over those few stifling months . . .A powerful and beautifully written novel by Ann Schlee at her very best.

Untouched by the ravages of war and the politically volatile atmosphere, the Villa della Pace remains an island of European society in the tiny British Protectorate of Aderra. Its circle religiously maintain their rigid social calendar and allow nothing, save the death of King George VI, to interfere with their pleasures. But the flawless surface of their lives conceals a turmoil of deception and desire . . .Flo has just left school in England and is flying out to spend the summer with her mother Lydia, and step-father Harry, who, as head of the British Administration, must oversee the forthcoming handover to indigenous rule. Lydia is determined that this year Flo will have the summer of her life, just as she herself did years earlier in Nairobi. And believing she can relive her youth through unworldly Flo, Lydia devises a plan for her daughter's social debut - even providing a man. But she little suspects the intensity of emotion behind Flo's quiet facade, nor the irrevocable impact her presence will have on the whole community over those few stifling months . . .A powerful and beautifully written novel by Ann Schlee at her very best.

Like the Rhine, Charlotte Morrison was full of unsuspected depths and hidden murmurings.On the surface, she was the unmarried Victorian aunt, whose sparse, unfulfilled life echoed the expectations of those she drudged for.But, happily boating down the Rhine with her brother and his wife, the sight of a fellow traveller, Edward Newman, releases the hissing flood waters of her subconscious. Dark and dangerous, they sweep Charlotte onward towards the watershed of her life.'The quality of the writing is so extraordinarily high that I could hardly believe it was a first novel' Margaret Forster'I raced through Rhine Journey. Mrs Schlee's simple and direct style makes for very easy reading. This is a first novel of considerable promise.' Olivia Manning'A journey down the Rhine in the company of Ann Schlee is the purest, simples pleasure' Sunday Telegraph