The Wonder

(Paperback)

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From the author of the Women's Prize-shortlisted Ordinary People - this is a dazzling novel about the fight to achieve one's dream, and an unsolved disappearance at the heart of a family 'Evans interweaves the strands of her three-generation narrative with an exhilarating sense of place and period' Daily Telegraph Read the dazzling family mystery from the Women's Prize-shortlisted author of Ordinary People As a child Lucas thought that all children who'd lost their parents lived on water. Now a restless young man still living with his sister Denise on their West London narrowboat, he determines to find out more about the unexplained disappearance of his father, the charismatic Jamaican dancer, Antoney Matheus. Thus unfolds a journey from fifties Kingston to sixties Notting Hill and the host of unforgettable characters who peopled Antoney's theatrical world, most importantly Carla, Lucas's mother. The result is a haunting family saga of absence and inheritance, the battle between love and creativity, and what drives a young man to take flight... 'Sparkles with mood, music and the sway of life' Marie Claire 'Diana Evans's fiction is emotionally intelligent, dark, funny, moving. The sheer energy in her novels is enthralling. A brilliant craftswoman, a master of the form, she makes the reader ask important questions of themselves and makes them laugh at the same time' Jackie Kay, British Council and National Centre for Writing's International Showcase on Britain's 10 best BAME writers

Reviews

The most dazzling depiction of the world of dance since Ballet Shoes' -- Kate Saunders * The Times *
Her prose is airbound at times - an exhilarating celebration of rhythm, sway and leap * Daily Mail *
Darkens from an absorbing mystery into a touching reckoning... Most striking is the delicacy and power with which Evans depicts emotional disturbance * The Guardian *
The story is complex, clever, seamlessly achieved, its many currents blending in harmony, sometimes in conflict, to recreate that sense of randomness and accident that resemble the truth of life in the chancy present...The author's passion burns on the page, along with an almost tactile relish of the act of writing itself -- Tom Adair * Scotsman *
A serious work of art with sentences like ribbons of silk winding around a skeleton of haunting imagery... Evans was born to write this novel * Independent *

Author Bio

Diana Evans was a dancer before becoming a journalist and author. She has contributed to the Independent, Marie Claire, the Guardian, the Observer, Harper's Bazaar, the Daily Telegraph and many other publications, and holds an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia. Her first novel, 26a, received a Betty Trask award, a nomination for the Guardian First Book Award and was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel of the Year Award. It was the inaugural winner of the Orange Award for New Writers and has been translated into twelve languages. She lives in London.