Förlagets beskrivning
It is 1885, a tempestuous - and pivotal - year in Robert Louis Stevenson's writing life. This fictive biography explores the circumstances that led Robert Louis Stevenson to settle in a Bournemouth villa called 'Skerryvore' that year. What went on behind the façade to induce the 'doomed and dazzling' Scottish writer to set aside 'Kidnapped', the 'boys' adventure' he was working on, and create, before the year was out, his chilling psychological thriller 'Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde'? Stevenson names the villa Skerryvore after the lighthouse put up by his family's engineering firm off the west coast of Scotland. His landlocked Skerryvore is perched at the edge of a chalky ravine, or chine, not far from the English Channel. There, he struggles to reconcile illness, entrapment, marital discord and lack of funds with his drive to write, while his American wife, Fanny, a 'Navaho at heart', sets about making 'labyrinthine paths' in the chine. 'Stevenson has surely never been rendered so vividly: Sian Mackay blends a biographer's quest for historical truth with a novelist's insight and imagination to create a work of striking originality. 'She lures her readers not only into the hearts and minds of Stevenson, his wife and household, but also into his drawing room, kitchen, study and bedroom, through which family intrigue and famous friends and acquaintances flow, including the Americans, Henry James and John Singer Sargent. 'The result is memorable: a literary portrait of rare intimacy.' - Jim Crumley 'It is a delight, not always offered in descriptive writing, to be able to find one's imagined way through the surroundings . . . scenes of pleasant encounters and excursions are realised to equal effect.' - Elspeth Barker Cover illustration: 'Two Studies for a Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson, 1885' by John Singer Sargent, reproduced by kind permission of Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum
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The House on the Chine: Robert Louis Stevenson at Skerryvore
Bokrecensioner » The House on the Chine: Robert Louis Stevenson at Skerryvore
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