Sacred Country [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

At the age of 6, while standing in a field observing a minute's silence for the death of King George IV, Mary Ward realized she was not a little girl. "That was a mistake," she said to herself. "She was a boy." Where this realization takes Mary is the ostensible subject of Sacred Country, although British writer Rose Tremain (author of The Way I Found Her) so lovingly treats the bleak town of Swaithey, England, where Mary grows up, and the people around her that the novel eddies out to encompass the town and times. With a steady eye, Tremain describes the harsh circumstances of Mary's early life and her disconnection from her body and surroundings. That she can find so much humor and magic in Mary's slow transformation into Martin is remarkable, but the book may be most memorable for its quiet realism and light, exacting prose. Not to be missed. --Regina Marler -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Taschenbuch .

English author Tremain (Restoration, 1990, etc.) returns triumphantly to the 20th century, sketching the outwardly stunted postwar lives of a dozen small-town characters in rural Suffolk- -people whose inner lives, however, are surprising, colorful, sometimes tragic, and drive many of them to a bittersweet, affecting end. At age six in 1952, Mary Ward--observing a minute of silence for the dead King George IV while standing in a potato field belonging to her brutish father, Sonny, and her dreamy mother, Estelle--suddenly becomes aware that she wishes she were a boy; over the next 30 years, fighting with her hapless brother Timmy, strapping her growing breasts against her chest, falling in love with a neighbor girl named Pearl, running away to her grandfather Cord's house in the wonderful town of Gresham Tears, changing her name to Martin, moving to London, submitting to psychoanalysis, and finally having a sex-change operation and emigrating to Nashville, heroic Mary makes this pressing wish come true. Estelle, lost in a vague dream of her own that eventually leads her to a mental hospital, and Sonny, who becomes a sloppy, suicidal drunk, don't fare as well. But Timmy--who wants to be a pastor rather than a farmer--does; he marries Mary's girlhood love-object Pearl. Eventually, the local homosexual dentist Gilbert, who longs for a swinging life; Walter, Gilbert's first lover, a butcher's son who wants to become a Nashville country music star; and Walker's mother Grace, who buys Sonny Ward's farm after Sonny has killed himself and who grows rich raising chickens--all these and others will get what they secretly need. So, finally, ironically, does even the dead tyrant Sonny--who gets a son to work the land, even though the son is Mary and the land she's working is in Tennessee. Tremain's latest starts slowly but gathers emotional speed and literary power: an entrancing, highly satisfying read. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

At the age of six, Mary Ward, standing with her family in a wintry Suffolk field to observe a two-minute silence in honor of the death of King George VI, comes to the realization that she was meant to be a boy. From this beginning in 1952 until 1980, Tremain tells the evocative tale of Mary's lonely quest to transform herself into Martin. Emotionally abandoned by her parents, Mary finds refuge first with her grandfather, Cord, and later with her schoolteacher, Miss McRae. With popular songs serving as touchstones through the decades, Tremain creates such haunting images as the one of Mary and Cord, returning from a visit to Mary's mother in a mental asylum, belting out "I'm sorry" with Brenda Lee on the car radio. This is one of those rare novels whose sensibilities are so trenchant that they forever alter one's perceptions of the world and the wonderfully eccentric people who inhabit it. Sure to be nominated for next year's Booker Prize, this novel is very highly recommended.
- Barbara Love, St. Lawrence Coll., Kingston, Ontario
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. -- Dieser Text bezieht sich auf eine andere Ausgabe: Gebundene Ausgabe .

“A remarkable novel... . The product of a truly original mind, whose inventions are magically unforseeable.” – The Times

“Hypnotic... Curiously beautiful and strikingly original.” – Spectator

“Rose Tremain writes comedy that can break your heart... Funny, absorbing and quite original. I’ve read nothing to touch it this year.” – Literary Review

“Brilliant... . A strong, complex, unsentimental novel.” – TLS

Novel about a six-year-old girl who realises she's a boy and goes on to change her gender. Set in Suffolk.

At the age of six, Mary Ward, the child of a poor farming family in Suffolk, has a revelation: she isn't Mary, she's a boy. So begins Mary's heroic struggle to change gender, while around her others also strive to find a place of safety and fulfilment in a savage and confusing world.

Rose Tremain won the 1999 Whitbread Novel Award (Music & Silence), the Sunday Express Book of the Year and the Booker Prize Shortlist (Restoration), The Dylan Thomas Short Story Award (The Colonel’s Daughter), a Giles Cooper Award (for the play Temporary Shelter) and the Angel Literary Award (twice). Her books have been translated into
14 languages with bestsellers in Britain, North America and France.