The Forgotten Smile

Description

The perfect holiday read- four visitors discover a new lease of life and reawaken old loves on a mysterious Greek island Kate is bored of being overlooked by her grown-up children and decides to escape on an Aegean cruise. She ends up in Keritha - a mysterious Greek island all but forgotten by the modern world. There she encounters her childhood friends, the Challoners, returned to the island of their birth to claim their heritage. When another stray arrives- the unattractive, foolish Selwyn Potter, Kate is irritated. But under the spell of this strange and beautiful island both visitors find themselves, and each other, cast in a new light.

Margaret Kennedy was born in London on 23 April 1896, the eldest of four children. Her first book, a commissioned work of history, was published in 1922 and was soon followed by her first work of fiction, The Ladies of Lyndon (1923). Her second novel, The Constant Nymph (1924), became a worldwide bestseller, and with it Kennedy became a well-known and highly praised writer. Kennedy went on to write fifteen further novels, many of which were critically commended - Troy Chimneys (1953) was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. She also wrote plays, adapting both The Constant Nymph and its sequel The Fool of the Family very successfully. The former opened in the West End in 1926, starring Noel Coward followed by John Gielgud, to great acclaim. Three different film versions of The Constant Nymph, featuring stars of the time such as Ivor Novello and Joan Fontaine, were equally popular. She also published a study of Jane Austen (1950) and a work of literary criticism, The Outlaws on Parnassus, in 1958. Kennedy died 31 July 1967. Writer Beverley Nichols said of Kennedy- 'There is a wildness in her mind ; a galloping, untutored spirit'.

An imaginative tale, symbolic and haunting and yet at times wryly humorous * Kirkus Reviews * Margaret Kennedy caught just the taste of the time, mixing a stolid domestic Englishness with 'Continental' bohemians * Irish Times * She is not only a romantic but an anarchist, and she knows the ways of men and women very well indeed -- Anita Brookner Kennedy was immensely popular in her heyday * Washington Post *