{"product_id":"upstairs-at-the-party","title":"Upstairs at the Party","description":"Product Description\n\n\n'If you go back and look at your life there are certain scenes, acts, or maybe just incidents on which everything that follows seems to depend. If only you could narrate them, then you might be understood. I mean the part of yourself that you don't know how to explain.' \nIn the early seventies, a glamorous and androgynous couple known as Evie\/Stevie appear out of nowhere on the isolated concrete campus of a new university. To a group of teenagers experimenting with radical ideas, they seem blown back from the future, unsettling everything and uncovering covert desires. But their mesmerising flamboyant self-expression hides deep anxieties and hidden histories.\n For Adele, who also has something to conceal, Evie becomes an obsession - an obsession which becomes lifelong after the night of Adele's twentieth birthday party. What happened that evening and who was complicit are questions that have haunted Adele ever since. A set of school exercise books might reveal everything, but they have been missing for the past forty years. \n From summers in 1970s Cornwall to London in the twenty-first century, long after she has disappeared, Evie will go on challenging everyone's ideas of how their lives should turn out. \n With her hallmark humour, intelligence and boldness Linda Grant has written a powerful and captivating novel about secrets and the moments that shape our lives.\n\n\nReview\n\n\nHaunting . . . compelling right to the very last page,\nList\n\nA hint of\nBrideshead . . . beautiful writing . . . [Grant] has a real knack for observation,\nEvening Standard\n\n[An] excellent novel . . . Straight-talking but far from straightforward in its observations,\nUpstairs at the Party's portrait of an era is convincing, its subtle cynicism regarding the pitfalls of freedom something to mull over,\nDaily Telegraph\n\nAn enthralling coming-of-age story,\nGood Housekeeping\n\nA stylish, ambitious novel,\nGlamour\n\nBrilliantly observed . . . determinedly unsettling,\nDaily Mail\n\nFascinating -- John Sutherland,\nThe Times\n\nOne of our best modern authors, a Liverpudlian with a huge imagination. I've never been able to stop reading any of her work once I've started -- Peter Hitchens,\nMail on Sunday\n\nGrant is so accomplished a novelist of recent social history . . . tender and touching -- Suzy Feay,\nLiterary Review\n\n\nUpstairs at the Party feels like a darker, more cynical version of Kate Atkinson's\nEmotionally Weird . . . a very good book: it creates a sense of yearning through a cloud of scepticism,\nObserver\n\nI read this deeply felt, deeply moving, novel twice. It's very good -- John Sutherland,\nThe Times\n\nA wonderfully and perceptively written story, which rings utterly true, and as a consequence lifts the spirits,\nGuardian\n\nGrant always writes with incisive elegance and here paints a compelling picture of 1970s England . . . a stunner -- Ian Rankin,\nGuardian\n\nHer eye for social history is as sharp as ever -- Suzy Feay,\nTablet\n\nIt's Grant's heartfelt emotional complexity that you'll remember long past the last page,\nStylist\n\nThere's a thoughtful pessimism about this novel that makes it the finest of elegies for the dreams of 50 years ago -- John Sutherland,\nThe Times\n\n\nPraise for We Had it So Good'Compelling, perceptive and deeply humane' - Michael Arditti, Daily Mail\n'Gripping and stylishly told. Post-war California, Oxford and London are recreated superbly and brightly . . . Grant comes close to creating the perfect novel' - Melissa Katsoulis, The Times\n'My only complaint? I fear I may not read a better book all year' - Rosamund Urwin, Evening Standard\n'Ambitious . . . Like the best novels, it makes you examine your own moral compass alongside that of its characters' -- Viv Groskop,\nObserver\n\n\nBook Description\n\n\nThe brilliant new novel from the Man Booker shortlisted author of\nThe Clothes on Their Backs\n\n\nFrom the Author\n\n\nLinda Grant is a novelist and journalist. She won the Orange Prize for Fiction in 2000 and the Lettre Ulysses Prize for Lite","brand":"Virago","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40119889887317,"sku":"9781844087518N","price":10.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/2481\/5790\/products\/5acf617d-ff3e-4833-9589-2580d4b1c38a.jpg?v=1655065138","url":"https:\/\/smeikalbooks.co.uk\/en-us\/products\/upstairs-at-the-party","provider":"smeikalbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}