A man returns subtly altered by the accident that could have taken his life. Another copes with fire and loss by rejecting the world he knows. A woman keeps her brand new vehicle in the darkness of her garage, running its engine every day without once letting it see the light of day. A fifteen year marriage is shaken by a fantasy.
In her first work for eight years, Ray tells the stories of people dislocated from the worlds in which they find themselves, asking how well we know each other or ourselves.
Short-listed for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize 2005, Rebbecca Ray is the author of A Certain Ageand Newfoundland.
Praise for Newfoundland:
‘Some of the most wonderful, luminous prose and haunting glimpses of humanity conjured by any author in recent years.’ Independent on Sunday
‘Enthralling, kaleidoscopic, worth every one of its thousand pages.’ Telegraph
‘Ray has the soul of a poet. In her skilled hands, even a washed out, rainy day has a glimmer of beauty.’ Sunday Express
‘Heartbreaking, rewarding. Ray’s voice is extraordinary. A novel that will be dazzling the curious for decades to come.’ Independent
Rebbecca Ray was born in 1979, to dope smoking, goat-rearing, hippy artist parents, in the most rural area of mid Wales. Ray left school at 17, to produce her first novel, the controversial best-seller A Certain Age. Published by Penguin when she was 18, the book opened many doors and Ray was to spend most of the next ten years in London, all the while working on her second novel, a thousand page long love letter to Wales, Newfoundland. Shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Commonwealth Prize in ‘05, Newfoundland was received with passionate reviews. She married a South African artist and ‘rave’ organiser in 2004, and they settled together on the farm where she grew up.