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The rare and the beautiful : the art, loves, and lives of the Garman sisters

The happiest days

A brilliant collection of short stories from an outstanding new voice in contemporary fiction. Happy days have their souring. In this remarkable debut, Cressida Connoly explores the lives of children and young people who, in the wake of events that alter everything, find themselves split like stone. A conversation on a trip to the zoo -- words which can't be clutched back -- heralds the end of a family; a boy watches his father fold Aunt Rose in his arms and loses his vocation; in an alarming account of sibling rivalry, a young girl becomes jealous of the attention afforded her dying sister. Each of these finely crafted stories is its own forceful and separate world where familiar emotions -- love, loss, jealousy, loneliness -- are dissembled and show anew.

After the party

'Had it not been for my weakness, someone who is now dead could still be alive. That is what I believed and consequently lived with every day in prison.' It is the summer of 1938 and Phyllis Forrester has returned to England after years abroad. Moving into her sister's grand country house, she soon finds herself entangled in a new world of idealistic beliefs and seemingly innocent friendships. Fevered talk of another war infiltrates their small, privileged circle, giving way to a thrilling solution: a great and charismatic leader, who will restore England to its former glory. At a party hosted by her new friends, Phyllis lets down her guard for a single moment, with devastating consequences. Years later, Phyllis, alone and embittered, recounts the dramatic events which led to her imprisonment and changed the course of her life forever. Powerful, poignant, and exquisitely observed, After the Party is an illuminating portrait of a dark period of British history which we are yet to fully acknowledge.