The Feast

With a new foreword by Cathy Rentzenbrink, this glorious rediscovered gem exploring the mystery of a buried Cornish hotel will make you nostalgic for 1940s seaside holidays ... 'The miniature charm of a Baby Austen.' Observer 'Kennedy is not only a romantic but an anarchist.' Anita Brookner 'Tense, touching, human, dire, and funny ... A feast indeed.' Elizabeth Bowen Cornwall, Midsummer 1947. Pendizack Manor Hotel has just been buried in the rubble of a collapsed cliff. Seven guests have perished, but what brought this strange assembly together for a moonlit feast before this Act of God - or Man? Over the week before the landslide, we meet the hotel guests in all their eccentric glory: the selfish aristocrat; slothful hotelier; snooping housekeeper; bereaved couple; bohemian authoress; poverty-stricken children - and as friendships form and romances blossom, sins are revealed, and the cliff cracks widen . . . Both a glorious portrait of seaside holidays in post-war Britain and a wise, witty fable, Margaret Kennedy's The Feast is a banquet indeed. 'Aptly named [for] it has Miss Kennedy's narrative skill; her distinction, her grace, above all, her peculiar magic.' Guardian