Foul Matter

Description

I have been on nodding terms with death since age nineteen. Death holds precious little mystery for me. During the last sixteen years I have eaten death for breakfast . . . For accomplished writer and chef Clytie Churchill suffering and love come hand in hand. The life of each person she loves seems to come to a desperate end - sickness, suicide, death by drowning, orphan and widower Clytie has grieved through it all. During a long night reminiscing in a remote French Chateau she resolves to throw out all this Foul Matter - like the old proofs of a finished book. But there is still one mystery to solve - when she learns there is a chance that little Finn, her dead husband's son, could have survived the sinking of his father's boat Clytie seeks out lawyer and ex-lover Anthony to help her track him down. Awardwinning author Joan Aiken touches upon love and death with a thoughtfulness and courage that makes Foul Matter a romantic suspense novel like no other.

Joan Aiken was born in Rye, Sussex in 1924, daughter of the American poet Conrad Aiken, and started writing herself at the age of five. Since the 1960s she wrote full time and published over 100 books. Best known for her children's books such as The Wolves of Willoughby Chase and Midnight is a Place, she also wrote extensively for adults and published many contemporary and historical novels, including sequels to novels by Jane Austen. In 1968 she won the Guardian Children's book prize for Whispering Mountain, followed by an Edgar Allan Poe award for Night Fall in 1972, and was awarded an MBE for her services to children's literature in 1999. Joan Aiken died in 2004.

This is not a sad book, it is written with all the author's accustomed sizzling wit . . . Clytie is truthful and inquiring, and determined to have a good time - and you will too when you read her story * West Sussex Gazette * Clytie Churchill, cooker up of banquets and cookbooks, has the richest hoard of incident-and accident prone relations . . . her menus sound super but her adventures are all heartburn. In fact in her own words to her publisher about an old manuscript - `Foul Matter. Who needs it?' * The Observer * Aiken holds the reader's attention from start to finish - an action-packed tale told reflectively, intelligently, and at times movingly * Sunday Telegraph * The gifted prolific British author tells another mesmerizing story with the characteristically `different' Aiken touches * Publisher's Weekly * Joan Aiken has written with her usual ebullient wit a book that is as frothy and easily digestible as one of its heroine's very best souffles -- Nina Bawden * Telegraph *