The Snow Ball: The Dazzling Cult Classic

(Paperback, Main)

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'Superb ... Sheer artistic insolence.' - Iris Murdoch

'Brilliantly seductive...A witty, sexy, sophisticated treat.' - Sarah Waters

London, New Year's Eve. Snow falls on a Georgian mansion, vibrating with the festivities of an eighteenth-century themed masquerade ball within. Middle-aged divorcee Anna stands alone, mourning her youth - until the clock chimes midnight and a mysterious masked figure kisses her on the mouth. Thus begins a heady dance of seduction charged by other clandestine romances swirling around them, whipping the ball into an erotic frenzy of operatic proportions - until the night climaxes, revealing unease beneath the glitter...

A scandalous sensation in 1964, Brigid Brophy's The Snow Ball is a dazzling festive classic ripe to seduce a new generation of readers.

'A magical capering beast by a comet in her day.' - Terry Castle

Reviews

One of the strangest and wittiest British writers of the past half century ... A comet in her day. -- Terry Castle

What a pleasure it is to come upon a novel which so palpably enjoys itself ... Superb ... Sheer artistic insolence. -- Iris Murdoch

Concerned as it is with the developments of three erotic relationships during a masked ball, it makes Mary McCarthy's The Group seem tame. -- Guardian

A miracle ... Society is touched by the magic of make-believe, a magic behind whose childlike gaiety there is a wholly adult melancholy, a deep preoccupation with the impermanence of love and the inevitability of death. -- Times

A marvel - at once so sensual and so intelligent, so decadent and so cutting, and wickedly funny in the bargain. -- Merve Emre

Author Bio

Brigid Brophy (1929-1995) was a prize-winning British novelist, critic, and political campaigner, championing causes as diverse as gay rights, pacifism, vegetarianism, and aetheism. A provocative public intellectual in the 1960s, she was a celebrated literary name and byword for controversy. Openly bisexual, she was sent down from Oxford for 'excessive carousing' before marrying Michael Levey, Director of the National Gallery, in 1954. Brophy published her acclaimed debut, Hackenfeller's Ape, in 1953, followed by multiple novels including The King of a Rainy Country, Flesh, The Finishing Touch, The Snow Ball, and In Transit, as well as critical studies of Mozart, Aubrey Beardsley, and Ronald Firbank, among others.

Eley Williams lectures at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her short story collection Attrib. and Other Stories won the James Tait Black Prize and the Republic of Consciousness Prize and was longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize. Her debut novel, The Liar's Dictionary, was published in July 2020.