Unexploded is Alison MacLeod''s heartrending novel of love and prejudice in wartime Brighton.
LONGLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2013
May, 1940. Wartime Brighton. On Park Crescent, Geoffrey and Evelyn Beaumont and their eight-year-old son, Philip, anxiously await news of the expected enemy landing on the beaches.
It is a year of change. Geoffrey becomes Superintendent of the enemy alien camp at the far reaches of town, and Evelyn, desperate to feel useful, begins reading to some of the prisoners. One of them is Otto Gottlieb, a ''degenerate'' German-Jewish. As Europe crumbles, Evelyn''s and Otto''s mutual distrust slowly begins to change into something else, which will shatter the structures on which her life, her family and her community rest.
''Like a piece of finely wrought ironwork, uncommonly delicate but also astonishingly strong and tensile . . . a novel of staggering elegance and beauty'' Independent
''Compelling, fast-paced, powerful . . . the denouement is as heart-rending as it is unexpected'' Financial Times
''MacLeod''s range - spanning the movingly real to the mysteriously surreal - is excitingly, imaginatively realised and unified in awareness of the dark menace of love''s uncertainty'' Metro
Alison MacLeod was raised in Canada and has lived in England since 1987. She is the author of three novels, The Changeling, The Wave Theory of Angels and Unexploded, and of a collection of stories, Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction. Unexploded was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction 2013. She is Professor of Contemporary Fiction at Chichester University and lives in Brighton.
Industry Reviews
Like a piece of finely wrought ironwork, uncommonly delicate but at the same time astonishingly strong and tensile . . . a novel of staggering elegance and beauty * Independent *
MacLeod's range - spanning the movingly real to the mysteriously surreal - is excitingly, imaginatively realised and unified in awareness of the dark menace of love's uncertainty * Metro *
An exploration of the xenophobia and neurosis unleashed in times of national crisis . . . MacLeod remains one of the most astute chaoticians writing today * Guardian *
Compelling, fast-paced, powerful. The descriptions of wartime Brighton are pin-sharp . . . the denouement is as heartrending as it is unexpected * Financial Times *
Unexploded is an unforgettable book. With exquisitely researched and rendered detail, the author plunges us into the panic and paranoia of war, fusing international politics, national politics and family politics in her powerful study of hypocrisy, oppression, cultural misunderstanding and desire -- Bidisha
Love, fear and prejudice are all skilfully anatomised in this compellingly intimate exploration of life in war time Brighton * Jane Rogers *
MacLeod has an engaged delight in the stuff of life * Times Literary Supplement *
'MacLeod's fictions are evocations of desire and its mysteries . . . [Her] characters are strong, and they are worth listening to * Guardian *
Finely wrought, moving and haunting. What a wonderful novel this is. Bravo Alison MacLeod -- Polly Samson
A persuasive period setting, an intricate plot, sumptuous prose * Daily Telegraph *
An intelligent, perceptive novel by a writer of great descriptive power . . . Like her modernist forebears, MacLeod knows that life and death, the terrible and the mundane always co-exist - her genius lies in illustrating these truths while simultaneously spinning a bona fide pageturner * Daily Mail *
