{"id":5654,"date":"2015-12-09T11:43:50","date_gmt":"2015-12-09T11:43:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=5654"},"modified":"2015-12-11T12:53:40","modified_gmt":"2015-12-11T12:53:40","slug":"the-last-pier-by-roma-tearne","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=5654","title":{"rendered":"The Last Pier by Roma Tearne"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Published by Aardvark Bureau 10 April 2015 <\/strong><\/p>\n

352pp, paperback, \u00a38.99<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2018There was a hint of envy in her voice.\u00a0 A small box of invisible desire stood on Rose\u2019s bedside table.\u00a0 Cecily saw all sorts of unidentified jewels inside.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u2018Do you want to go, too\u2019 she asked, feeling like a magpie, lifting the invisible lid with one finger.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u2018Of course not! I don\u2019t want to fight the Germans.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0 Her sister\u2019s eyes were ablaze with lies as she prised Cecily\u2019s fingers off the lid and closed the box firmly.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u2018But I don\u2019t want to spend my life in this ghastly place, either.\u2019<\/em> <\/strong><\/p>\n

It is late summer, 1939.\u00a0 Fourteen-year-old Cecily is in awe of her older sister, Rose, who is so beautiful and so romantic.\u00a0 Rose is envious of their brother, Joe, who has just signed up and will get away, to France.\u00a0 Palmyra Farm, their Suffolk home, is preparing for the harvest.\u00a0 England that summer, on the brink of war, is as beautiful as Rose, the land lying \u2018under a hazy golden silence\u2019 as \u2018death watched them from amongst the froth of cow parsley.\u2019<\/p>\n

If Rose\u2019s fatal flaw is romanticism, Cecily\u2019s is curiosity:\u00a0 she is an inveterate eavesdropper.\u00a0 In this family there is much to overhear, all of it confusing.<\/p>\n

The Maudsley family at Palmyra consists of parents Agnes and Selwyn, their three children, Aunt Kitty (Agnes\u2019s sister) and a collection of staff, including cook and gardener.\u00a0 The children\u2019s friends include Bellamy, the tinker\u2019s boy, with whom Rose has sex, and the charming Molinello family, owners of the first Italian ice-cream parlour in Bly.\u00a0 While Agnes picks the endless fruit and Rose listens to jazz, Selwyn leaves his tractor behind and goes up to London for a government interview.\u00a0 From then on, he takes charge of air-raid precautions.<\/p>\n

Preparations for the annual tennis party, complete with Italian ice-cream, vie with the harvest.\u00a0 Golden day follows golden day.\u00a0 Creepy Robert Wilson appears, with boxes of chocolates:\u00a0 is he a friend, or a spy?\u00a0 Carlo Molinello watches Rose, Bellamy watches Rose, Robert Wilson watches Rose.\u00a0 Selwyn keeps disappearing.\u00a0 Agnes is sad, Kitty is sharp, Cecily mystified.\u00a0 And then Cecily makes a mistake.<\/p>\n

Nearly 30 years later, Cecily returns, to the derelict farmhouse in which her mother lived on after The Tragedy that year – when Rose died, and Selwyn went to prison.\u00a0 Memories flood back.\u00a0 Some of the secrets she eventually uncovers are worse than her guilt, and almost impossible to bear.<\/p>\n

This (Tearne\u2019s sixth) is an extraordinarily compelling, subtle and atmospheric novel, inspired by the chance discovery of old photographs. \u00a0In it, Tearne does justice not only to history but to the heartbreaking complexities of family life in a time of war.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/p>\n

*A 2015 Notable Book<\/p>\n

Preparations for the annual tennis party, complete with Italian ice-cream, vie with the harvest. Golden day follows golden day. Creepy Robert Wilson appears, with boxes of chocolates: is he a friend, or a spy? Carlo Molinello watches Rose, Bellamy watches Rose, Robert Wilson watches Rose. Selwyn keeps disappearing. Agnes is sad, Kitty is sharp, Cecily mystified. And then Cecily makes a mistake […] in Reviews<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,19,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-notable-books","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5654"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6410,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5654\/revisions\/6410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}