Natural Elements

Zusatztext 77562258 Informationen zum Autor Richard Mason was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, and grew up there and in London. In 1999, Mason started the Kay Mason Foundation (www.kaymasonfoundation.org), which helps disadvantaged teenagers in South Africa attend the country’s best schools. Mason lives in Glasgow, Scotland. Klappentext In this moving! layered novel of memory and family! celebrated author Richard Mason tells the story of a mother and daughter! one caught in the past! one racing toward the future. Joan is eighty years old! a gifted amateur pianist who can no longer play because of her arthritic hands. Joan's daughter! Eloise! is an ambitious hedge fund manager who has decided to move her mother to an assisted-living facility. As a last hurrah! Eloise plans a trip to Joan's childhood home in South Africa. What Joan discovers there summons long-buried secrets and opens up an entirely new world. Natural Elements is a dazzling tale of history and longing! and the high-stakes! full-tilt embrace of life. 1        Number 17 Kingsley Gardens presided over a leafy street on the south side of the river, protected from the traffic of Trinity Road by its own substantial grounds and a low-rise 1950s development of flats and shops. A flight of stairs led to an imposing front door, beside which a brass plaque engraved the Albany was discreetly obscured by a well-pruned yew tree in a terra-cotta pot. Only a wheelchair ramp spoiled the illusion of an exclusive gentlemen’s club, though its expansive width and polished gold rails implied a superior sort of disabled access.      Eloise helped her mother from the taxi and put her arm around her shoulders. “Here we are!” she said.      “Yes,” said Joan. “Here we are indeed.”      They stood together on the pavement, admiring the building’s exuberant exterior. As the Albany’s full-color brochure informed potential residents on its opening page, the home occupied a “Grade II listed Victorian mansion, sympathetically restored to the highest standards and retaining many of its original period features.” Above them, the architectural fashions of a thousand years competed for prominence on a densely crowded façade across which turrets, cupolas and bay windows had been liberally scattered by an effusive architect of the late nineteenth century. Medieval arrow slits sliced through Jacobean gables; slate roofs rose steeply, dotted with oeil-de-boeuf windows. Gothic arches, Norman columns and Corinthian pilasters jostled for attention across a frontage of white stucco stamped, above the door, with ornately intertwined G’s and C’s.      “Goodness me,” said Joan.      “This looks like the best one so far.” Eloise spoke with the slightly hysterical optimism of one who has spent too many successive Saturdays examining residential care facilities for the elderly.      “It’s certainly better than that place in Enfield.”      “I’d never have let you live there.”      Joan squeezed her daughter’s hand affectionately. She did not remotely condemn Eloise for putting her into a home. She had not brought her into the world, given her life and loved her, raised her and cared for her as best she could, in expectation of return. She gripped her hand more tightly and said, “No, of course not, darling.”      They rang the bell and were met in the pillared entrance hall by a smartly turned-out nurse in a uniform of gray and white, whose name tag read “SISTER KAREN.” “And you must be Mrs. McAllister—or may I call you Joan?” She enunciated each word with sprightly professionalism. “I am the Nursing Manager here. Welcome to the Albany!”      There was something representative, Joan thought, in the tone of Sister Karen’s voice. It carried in it the well-scrubbed tiles of the Albany’s entrance-hall floor and suggested scrupulously tidy, air-freshened public...

Dettagli sul prodotto

• Autori: Richard Mason
• Editore: Vintage USA
• Lingue: Inglese
• Formato: Tascabile
• Pubblicazione: 06.04.2010
• EAN: 9780307387325
• ISBN: 978-0-307-38732-5
• Pagine: 416
• Dimensioni: 130 mm x 203 mm x 22 mm
• Categoria: Narrativa > Romanzi