Maggie Gee

the joy of reading Maggie Gee. The ObserverThe people in The Blue, Maggie Gees first collection of short stories, try and often fail to understand the world, freeing themselves by small acts of courage, love or folly. A journalist decides to convert an evangelist in mid-air; a solicitor gives up his day job to help young artists; a Middle Eastern woman shocks her children as she walks through the heat towards the sea; a man, in a moment of madness, cuts down his neighbours tree.These subtle fables of everyday life are set against an intricate global backdrop where life is harder for outsiders. Exquisitely written and aerated by comedy, they show human beings who struggle to live good lives.Her writing is clear as glass and has marvellous rhythm, fluency and grace.-- The ObserverImpressive, captivating and highly recommended.-- Scotland on SundayMaggie Gee is a superb and pitiless analyser of middle-class angst.-- The TimesMaggie Gee is one of our most ambitious and challenging novelists. -- Sunday TimesOriginal and courageous. -- Doris LessingUnited by Gees ability to delineate personalities and adopt voices with small but accurate touches. ... Light sketches, filled with colour. -- Times Literary SupplementDeceptive stylistic simplicity and plain dialogue, complicated emotions are revealed in The Blue ... Each story casts an individual spell. --Mslexia Magazine

Lottie Lucas is the luckiest person she knows. She has looks, money, three houses and a teenage son she adores ...So why is her husband Harold walking out on her? Light Years is also about zoos and the zodiac; the seasons and the stars; and how humans see the natural world. It is a novel about the possibilities of happiness, a surprising and beautiful contemporary love story.

Ugandan Mary Tendo worked for many years in the white middle-class Henman household in London, cleaning for Vanessa and looking after her only child, Justin. More than ten years after Mary has left, Justin - now twenty-two - is too depressed to get out of bed. To his mothers surprise, he asks for Mary. When Mary responds to Vanessas cry for help and returns from Uganda to look after Justin, the balance of power in the house shifts dramatically. Both womens lives change irrevocably as tensions build towards a climax on a snowbound motorway. Beautifully observed, intelligent and moving a carefully wrapped surprise that gets better and better with the unravelling. The Scotsman A moving, funny, engrossing book. The Observer Gee satirises the liberal conscience of the chattering classes with uncomfortable perception in this hugely enjoyable novel her portrayal of Britains new underclass of immigrant workers is presented with her trademark stinging clarity. Metro Maggie Gee is a superb and pitiless analyser of middleclass angst. Elegant, humorous and surprising, this is a classy performance. The Times Its amazing how many details, characters, stories within stories, Maggie Gees unquenchable exuberance crams into this comparatively short book. The Spectator An intelligent and satisfying read. The Sunday Times A masterful study in Africa/UK relations which manages to be supremely uncomfortable without being cynical, and clever without being calculating. Big Issue The Flood was chillingly predictive. My Cleaner is a calmer, happier novel. Yet a gnawing tragedy lies in the shadows, all the more poignant for the deftness with which its brushed aside. The Independent

Alfred White, a London park keeper, rules his home with a mixture of rigidity and tenderness that has estranged his three children. For years, Alfreds daughter Shirley and her black partner Elroy have avoided her comically ignorant younger brother Dirk, who admires his father and hates people of colour. But family ties are strong: when Alfred collapses on duty one day, all the children rush to be with him. The scene is set for bloodshed, forcing Alfred to make a climactic choice between justice and kinship.Exploring the roots of racism in British society, The White Family traces what happens when a family reaches breaking point after years of love and hate, violence and polite silence.This twentieth-anniversary edition includes an introduction by Bernardine Evaristo and a note from the author revealing the story behind this contemporary classic.SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTION AND THE INTERNATIONAL IMPAC DUBLIN LITERARY AWARDIn this ground-breaking new novel, Maggie Gee bravely and uniquely explores the nuances of racism from the perspective of the perpetrators, within the context of family relationships. The resulting work is a brilliant depiction of British society at the end of the twentieth century.--Bernardine Evaristo, author of Girl, Woman, OtherOutstanding tender, sexy and alarming. --Jim CraceCourageous, honest, powerfully real-- The TimesGee is unflinching in her exploration of the causes and consequences of racism.--The ObserverThe White Family points to new directions in British writing. Full of power and passion as well as some timely warnings it deserves the widest possible readership.--Literary ReviewA transcendent work.-- Daily TelegraphA triumph of hope over despair, reconciliation over bitterness an unashamedly contemporary novel that embraces the ideological and emotional chaos of our time.--The Independent An audacious, ground-breaking condition-of-England novel that delves for the roots of xenophobic hatred and violence in the English hearth The White Family is finely judged and compulsively readable. Its head-on scrutiny of the uglier face of fair Albion is the more impressive for its rarity in British fiction.--The Guardian

How do you become a writer, and why? Maggie Gees journey starts a long way from the literary world in a small family in post-war Britain. At seventeen, Maggie goes, a lamb to the slaughter, to university. From the 1960s onwards she lives the defining events of her generation: the coming of the Pill and sexual freedom, tremors in the British layer-cake of class and race. In the 1980s, Maggie finally gets published, falls in love, marries and has a daughter -- but for the next three decades and beyond, she survives, and sometimes thrives, by writing. This frank, bold memoir dares to explore the big questions: success and failure, sex, death and parenthood -- our animal life. A wise and beautiful book about what it feels like to be alive -- I really loved it Zadie Smith Exceptionally interesting and brave ... a wonderful book Claire Tomalin A fine, honest, complex portrait of an artists mind Michele Roberts, Independent Every word strikes like a hammer on an anvil, throwing off sizzling sparks Bidisha, The f word Anyone who yearns for that lost post-war Britain would do well to read this vivid, minutely observed memoir ...Gee has a sensuous eye for detail Sinclair McKay, Telegraph It is a testament to Gees skill with structure, her lightness of touch and her honesty, particularly about the most painful episodes, that she has fashioned this account of a fundamentally satisfying and happy writers life into such a page-turner. Melissa Benn, New Statesman Maggie Gee writes with such courage and wit. This is a vivid portrait of a woman finding her way through the maze of class ridden post war England, the 60s, feminism and how to be a mother and a writer. Diana Melly Highly recommended for all aspiring writers Bernardine Evaristo Observant, honest and sensitively-written... Michael Holroyd Fresh and funny ... with a zest for living that bounces off the page... Psychologies Sensitive, honest, courageous, stylish The Times [Gees] utterly compelling on the rollercoaster of writing life, from early success to rock-bottom rejection. Often joyous; infinitely wise; passionate and poised, this is a book youll want to sit in silence with and hug to yourself -- then start again. Daily Mail

Vanessa Henman, a plucky but accident-prone white writer, flies from London to Uganda for an African writers conference. She also means to visit her former cleaner, Ugandan Mary Tendo, now the successful Executive Housekeeper of Kampalas up-market Sheraton Hotel. But Mary has her own agenda: her son Jamil is missing, and she has secretly summoned Vanessas beloved ex-husband Trevor, a plumber, to her home village to build a new well. Vanessa sets off alone on safari to distant Bwindi Impenetrable Forest to see the mountain gorillas. But she quarrels with her driver and a bloody war closes in on Bwindi from Congo. Can anyone save her? Will Mary Tendo find her son? One of her strongest novels to datefast-moving, energetic, constantly surprising Hilary Mantel Maggie Gee has never written better Rose Tremain A tour de force - brilliantly structured, surprising, humane, and suspenseful Elaine Showalter Brilliantjust brilliantthis book deserves to be published in every language Hillary Jordan Executed with a lovely, light touch ... an immensely enjoyable novel. Lionel Shriver, Daily Telegraph Worldy, witty, enjoyable, impressive Doris Lessing Sparky, funny and terrifically entertaining Guardian

Its the 2030s in Ramsgate and four people who dont look quite human are found sitting, naked, in the early spring sunlight on the quay of the quiet south coast resort. The locals are puzzled the newcomers are larger and heavier than they are and say they are fleeing the heat. Soon more arrive. Their tall red-haired leader, The Professor, talks to the universe. The locals talk among themselves.Red people appear everywhere, making friends, going into the caves, liked by some but accused of bringing infection by others. Two rivalrous brothers, Liam and Joe, take different sides as one joins a notorious far-right group. Their teacher Monica is the first to warn therell be trouble. And shes right, there is; but there is also a great Midsummer Festival, laughter and love.Set in a world in crisis, this original, gripping fable about migration and global warming restores belief in the power of human kindness.A stylish, intriguing novel. A fable bursting with freshness and foresight, a charming, sparkling jewel of a novel to be cherished and held high as an antidote to modern day bleakness and climate despair.-- Leila AboulelaThe Red Children offers a warning and a vision of our past, present and future. This timely, vital and generous book is extraordinary in its courage, and hopeful and brutally honest in its clarity. An essential book for our times.-- Salena GoddenSuperb. A mesmerising, deeply engrossing work.--Irenosen Okojie

Its the middle of the twenty-first century, and the next Ice Age has suddenly sent global warming into reverse. Saul is one of the Ice People, the threatened peoples of the northern hemisphere, who, watching their world freeze over, try to move south towards the equator... Excellent ... intelligent, driven, imaginative, obsessive yet still gracious, one of our best ... Exciting stuff. Fay Weldon Ambitious and subtle... She writes elegantly, unsentimentally, expertly... The Ice People works persuasively as science fiction, and is truthful about our emotional lives. Independent Infused with poetic intensity ... this is a gripping fictional realisation of what we fear: the death of civilisation. Maggie Gee achieves her apocalyptic vision without the clank of hardware and intergalactic wars. Her detail is precise and controlled and her beautifully orchestrated whisper of redemption is rooted in eternal myth. Elizabeth Buchan The Times An intriguing novel of ideas, fully fleshed out ... Classy science fiction. Mail on Sunday A remarkable novel... up there with Orwell and Huxley. Jeremy Paxman A gem of a book. Rose Tremain A rattling good page-turning yarn. George Melly A fantastic book Mariella Frostrup

What if Virginia Woolf came back to life in the twenty-first century?Bestselling author Angela Lamb is going through a mid-life crisis. She dumps her irrepressible daughter Gerda at boarding school and flies to New York to pursue her passion for Woolf, whose manuscripts are held in a private collection. When a bedraggled Virginia Woolf herself materialises among the bookshelves and is promptly evicted, Angela, stunned, rushes after her on to the streets of Manhattan.Soon she is chaperoning her troublesome heroine as Virginia tries to understand the internet and scams bookshops with rare signed editions. Then Virginia insists on flying with Angela to Istanbul, where she is surprised by love and steals the show at an International Conference on Virginia Woolf.Virginia Woolf in Manhattan is a witty and profound novel about female rivalry, friendships, mothers and daughters, and the miraculous possibilities of a second chance at life.

Paula is a victim of mysterious harassment. She lives near the railway line that carries nuclear waste through the heart of London and feels curiously, constantly unwell. Grace, her remarkable eighty-five-year-old aunt, deplores the evils of the modern world. When she, too, is plagued by silent phone calls, she escapes to Seabourne on the South Coast, where nothing ever happens except quiet deaths and holidays. Bruno is a sexually quirky private detective who attacks daisies with scissors, germs with bleach and old ladies for fun. If he follows Grace to Seabourne, can anything save her? Inspired by the real-life murder of anti-nuclear protester Hilda Murrell, Grace is a breathtaking thriller that asks whether, in a bankrupt, dishonest, security-mad Britain, courage and love still count for something. Excellent The Times Heart-stoppingly exciting Time Out Maggie Gees excellent novel treads a sure path between love and fear, taking as its starting point sinister and secret happenings in contemporary England. I read it twice, and it was even better the second time. Anita Brookner, The Spectator Full of poignancy and power. Jeannette Winterson

Una novela ambiciosa, que explora planos diversos con una hondura que no está reñida con la amenidad y el humor. Una aguda aproximación a las relaciones entre Europa y África, a partir de dos impecab

Maggie GeeAfter months of rain, a capital city full of birds, foxes and humans is sinking under the floods. The rich still live much as usual, in their big houses on higher ground, but the poor in their packed tower-blocks are becoming more and more cut off while the fanatical 'Last Days' religious sect is recruiting thousands. When the rain suddenly stops, the government - eager to distract attention from a foreign war they have been waging - announces a spectacular City Gala to which the swarming characters of this visionary book flock.

Maggie GeeLottie Lucas is the luckiest person she knows. She has looks, money, three houses and a teenage son she adores. So why is her husband Harold walking out on her a few days before Christmas?

Christopher and Alexandras passion for each other raises eyebrows and invites envy. This beautiful, blinkered couple do the unthinkable and run away from home, abandoning their two teenage children. Their sudden departure is an act of glorious wilfulness. Life in the countries they visit is nothing more than a backdrop to their love affair. Fifteen years later Alexandra is in remote Bolivia with a lover young enough to be her son and Christopher is in Venice, desolate and alone but for the pigeons and prostitutes. Tormented by past mistakes, neither can accept that they may never meet again. The most exhilarating novel Ive read all year. Scotland on Sunday A rich story of the heart told through a harlequin pattern of alternating voices, each of which is a work of real imaginative insight. Marie Claire Maggie Gees immense talent catches passion on the wing a romance of a truth and depth thats never without humour. Mail on Sunday A remarkable and ambitious book, a tribute to Maggie Gees imaginative power. Literary Review More erotic than a thousand blockbusters Mail on Sunday So rich it is almost aromatic ... an impressive and important novel Nigella Lawson, The Evening Standard Compulsive reading The Sunday Times