Cressida Connolly

'Had it not been for my weakness, someone who is now dead could still be alive. That is what I believed and consequently lived with every day in prison.' It is the summer of 1938 and Phyllis Forrester has returned to England after years abroad. Moving into her sister's grand country house, she soon finds herself entangled in a new world of idealistic beliefs and seemingly innocent friendships. Fevered talk of another war infiltrates their small, privileged circle, giving way to a thrilling solution: a great and charismatic leader, who will restore England to its former glory. At a party hosted by her new friends, Phyllis lets down her guard for a single moment, with devastating consequences. Years later, Phyllis, alone and embittered, recounts the dramatic events which led to her imprisonment and changed the course of her life forever. Powerful, poignant, and exquisitely observed, After the Party is an illuminating portrait of a dark period of British history which we are yet to fully acknowledge.

After the Party

Bad Relations

The garman sisters, who were born in England's Midlands and whose scandalous lives placed them at the center of European cultural activity in the middle of the twentieth century, were famous for their passion for the arts, defiance of convention, and the power to turn heads and break hearts. Their exquisite taste, colorful personalities, and unleashed pursuit of romance earned them a unique place in London's legendary bohemia, inspiring a generation of artists and writers. Kathleen, an enigmatic artist's model and aspiring pianist, was the lover of the controversial American-born sculptor Jacob Epstein, who immortalized her in seven sensual portraits, fathered her three children, and became, at the end of his life, her husband. Kathleen's sister Mary married the maverick poet Roy Campbell, whose verse attack on the Bloomsbury group following Mary's affair with Vita Sackville-West caused a literary scandal. Mary and Roy, enamored by Mediterranean culture and lifestyle, lived in Spain, Portugal, and the south of France during the continent's turbulent decades, where inspiration and destruction came to them in equal measure. Lorna, the youngest and most radiant of the sisters, became the lover of the young poet Laurie Lee and the painter Lucian Freud, each of whom later married one of her nieces. The Garman sisters became involved in the radical literary and political circles of Europe between the two world wars. Their lifestyle was outside the prevailing mores: bisexuality, unfaithfulness, and illegitimate children were a matter of course. Headstrong and flamboyant, they sidelined their own talent for writing, painting, and music, their friendships, material comforts -- even their own children -- in the cause of art and beauty. In fourteen short chapters, The Rare and the Beautiful -- inspired by the exquisite Garman Ryan art collection, bequeathed by Kathleen Garman and including works by Bonnard, Constable, Picasso, Degas, Pissarro, Braque, Modigliani, and van Gogh -- evokes the extraordinary milieu of scandal, high drama, and high culture that defined twentieth-century bohemia. An unorthodox biography of women who broke the rules with inimitable style, it is also a thoughtful meditation on the power of the muse, the glamour of art, and the personal sacrifice it exacts.

The Art, Loves, and Lives of the Garman Sisters

The Rare and the Beautiful

When she grew up, Ruth would say that she could place the day that her mother had decided to go away. She didn't know the actual date, but she recalled the occasion: it was on the afternoon of a wet day, early in 1942, during a visit to the cinema. She thought she could even pinpoint the exact moment at which Iris had made up her mind to go, leaving her only child behind. Neither of them could have guessed then that they would never live together again.

My Former Heart

A TALE OF A TRAGEDY SEEPING THROUGH GENERATIONS, AND A FAMILY FRACTURED BY HISTORY AND DESIRE - available for pre-order now 'The characters in Bad Relations are so brilliantly real, so wonderfully compelling at their best, and at their worst, that I can't get them out of my head. A wonderful novel' Nina Stibbe 'A writer who seems able to peer directly into the human heart' John Preston On the battlefields of the Crimea, William Gale cradles the still-warm body of his brother. William's experience of war will bring about a change in him that will reverberate through his family over the next two centuries. In the 1970s, William's descendants invite Stephen, a distant relation, to stay in their house in the English countryside - but their golden summer entanglements will end in a shocking fall from grace. Half a century later, a confrontation between the surviving members of the family will culminate in a terrible reckoning. Praise for AFTER THE PARTY: 'Uncanny, evocative, atmospheric' Sunday Times 'Connolly is a terrifically subtle writer... [she] slyly sweeps her readers into the period drama as tensions tauten between families and social classes' Daily Telegraph 'Profound and moving and completely original, with a storyline that is completely satisfying. It'll be one of those novels that stays in my mind forever... it's a work of art' Craig Brown 'I finished it in two days flat and I've never read anything quite like it' Hilary Spurling 'Wonderfully subtle and interesting... with a compelling voice' Linda Grant

Even happy days come to an end. In this remarkable collection, Cressida Connolly explores the lives of children and young people who find themselves split in two. A conversation on a trip to the zoo heralds the end of a family; a boy watches his father fold Aunt Rose into his arms and loses his vocation; a young girl grows jealous of the attention paid to her dying sister. Examining familiar emotions--love, loss, jealousy, loneliness--with a fresh eye, The Happiest Days is an exciting, original, startling debut.

Cressida Connolly

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