Caroline's Bikini

Description

Art needs a sense of lack to bring about its own effects; where there is no feeling of need to make up a shortfall, there will be no work. 'Alright' I said, 'I'll try...' This is how Emily Stuart opens the intricately involved account of a classic love affair that becomes Caroline's Bikini: a tale of hope, passion, and the power of the imagination. For they say, the story of love - or, rather, falling in love - is timeless, and that unrequited love is the most passionate of all. It's certainly a narrative that is, in its own curious and enticing way, as old as Western literature itself. The moment Emily's friend Evan Gordonstone, a successful middle-aged financier, meets the glamorous Caroline Beresford at Richmond home, we are immediately immersed a whole new kind of world. Thus begins a hypnotic series of intense conversations set against the beguiling backdrop of West London's bars, fuelled by liberal G&Ts. From early winter to July's hot swelter, Emily narrates Evan's passion for Caroline - a former horsewoman and PR expert, and now mother, hostess, housewife and landlady - to the brink of his own destruction. In a mischievously intelligent novel about desire, ambition, and friendship - about Petrarch and his Laura, Dante and Beatrice, Evan and Caroline - the acclaimed Kirsty Gunn explores the nature of courtly love in a modern world not celebrated for its restraint and abstraction. Ready. Steady. Go!

Kirsty Gunn published her first novel, Rain, with Faber in 1994, and since then has written six works of fiction, including novels and short stories. Her novel, The Big Music, won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize and the NZ Post Award. She is presently Professor of Writing and Practice and Study at the University of Dundee. She lives in London and Scotland with her husband and two daughters.

"...when restless innovators such as Ali Smith, Nicola Barker, Sarah Hall, Will Self, Jon McGregor, Deborah Levy, Gwendoline Riley and Eimear McBride set much of the agenda for fiction...Kirsty Gunn belongs in this exemplary few..."--Financial Times "A really superb, very readable novel."--Guardian "A restless innovator ... Trumps even her own past work in its audacity ... Guts and cheek to spare ... Reminded me of James's serpentine late style as much as it did the prose of Virginia Woolf or Gunn's compatriot, Katherine Mansfield ... Caroline's Bikini nods to its Modernist ancestors but never grovels to them ... Gunn's serious playfulness will make you think again about every convention of fiction we lazily take for granted ... Nothing much may happen. But the feeling -- and the writing -- overflows."--Boyd Tonkin, Financial Times "Kirsty Gunn is a deep thinker; a maverick, an entertainer, and a great writer."--Deborah Levy "[Her writing is] a perfect, witty riposte to that casual dismissal, and a lesson in how much goes on beneath the surface of everyday life ... Gunn traces hidden emotional topographies with insight and attentiveness to form and language which marks her previous work ... delicate, unsettling and revelatory."--Observer "An author of undeniable talent."--Sunday Times Gunn has always been a notably original writer ... Her writing is extraordinarily controlled, rich, and melodic ... "--Guardian "'[a] bold and brainy enterprise.'"--Observer "Gunn's playful and endearing voice makes it a joy to read. Who knew postmodernism could be this fun?"--Tatler "Remarkable ... demands that readers put themselves into the same headspace as they would before embarking on a novel by, say, William Faulkner, James Joyce or Woolf."--Financial Times Gunn has written a blissfully anarchic and inspiring novel about the futility of writing; a delightful paradox in itself."--Literary Review