The Virgin in the Garden

Description

Reissued with a beautiful new illustrative cover, the first Frederica Potter novel follows our heroine as she searches for freedom and begins a love affair In Yorkshire, the Potter family are preparing to celebrate Elizabeth II's arrival on the throne. Its three youngest members, however, are preoccupied with other matters. Stephanie has grown tired of their overbearing father and resolves to marry the local curate. Anxious teenager Marcus gains a new teacher and suffers increasingly disturbing visions. Then there is Frederica. On the brink of adulthood, a love affair with a young playwright may offer the freedom she desperately desires. THE FIRST FREDERICA POTTER NOVEL

A.S. Byatt is a novelist, short-story writer and critic of international renown. Her novels include Possession (winner of the Booker Prize in 1990), and the Frederica Quartet; The Children's Book was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. She was appointed CBE in 1990 and DBE in 1999 and is the recipient of the Erasmus Prize 2016 for her 'inspiring contribution to life writing'.

Large, complex, ambitious, humming with energy and ideas... A remarkable achievement -- Iris Murdoch Comic, well plotted, immensely touching... Gaudy excitement and splendour * The Times * An ambitious novel [whose] narrative everywhere displays knowledge and intelligence * Times Literary Supplement *