'It is remarkable for me to remember now that I thought it would be possible to walk away from her, that she might have gone on living, but without me. I know now I never would have had the strength of my convictions. I am living in a world without Lucy. I have no choice about that. If she were alive and I had that choice, I wouldn't have been able to last without her for a day.'
Winner of The Women''s Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The poignant - and at times very funny - novel from the author of The Dutch House and Commonwealth . Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country''s vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honour of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosokawa. Roxane Coss, opera''s most revered soprano, has mesmerised the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening - until a band of gun-wielding terrorists takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, a moment of great beauty, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different continents become compatriots, intimate friends, and lovers.
The first novel from the bestselling author of The Dutch House , Commonwealth and Bel Canto , Winner of The Women''s Prize for Fiction and the Pen/Faulkner Award. It is 1968. Rose Clinton arrives at St Elizabeth''s, a Roman Catholic home for unwed mothers in Habit, Kentucky. Rose has fled her dull but loving husband without telling him she is pregnant and has decided to be ''a liar for the rest of my life''. As penance, she has also abandoned her widowed and much loved mother, with no mention of her condition. Rose plans to give her baby up because she knows she cannot be the mother it needs. But St. Elizabeth''s is home to a healing spring, and when Rose''s time draws near, she realises that she cannot go through with her plans. Nor can she remain untouched by those she has left behind; by the ever-watchful Sister Evangeline; by the love of Son, the handyman at St. Elizabeth; or later by the birth of her daughter Cecilia. Enchantingly graceful, Ann Patchett''s first novel is about sanctuary and pilgrimage, pain and healing and the helping hand of chance.
Ann Patchett''s second novel to be published in the UK, following the Orange Prize-shortlisted ''The Magician''s Assistant''.
John Nickel is a black ex-jazz musician who only wants to be a good father. When his son is taken away to Miami by his mother, Nickel is left with nothing but Muddy''s, the Memphis blues bar that he manages. Then he hires Fay Taft, a young white waitress from east Tennessee who has a volatile brother, Carl, in tow. They spell nothing but trouble for Nickel. Fay stirs up both romantic and paternal impulses in him and Carl is clearly a no-good.
But Nickel finds himself consumed with the idea of Taft, Fay and Carl''s dead father, and begins to reconstruct the life of a man he never met but whose place he has taken.
