An Inventory of Heaven
On sale
17th May 2012
Price: £9.99
As a young woman, Mavis Gaunt leaves post-war London to make a new life for herself in rural Devon, where she spent a few blissful months of her childhood as an evacuee. Living alone in the verdant hamlet of Shipleigh, she believes she’s found a heaven on earth – until a violent tragedy brings trouble to paradise, and turns Mavis’s idyllic solitude into a tormented, guarded isolation.
Decades later, the arrival of a newcomer to the village forces Mavis to make a final reckoning: should she take her horrible secret to the grave? Or, should she summon up her ghosts and, in doing so, lay them to rest? An Inventory of Heaven is a lyrical and intimate meditation on the rural life, falling in love and the long passing of time.
Decades later, the arrival of a newcomer to the village forces Mavis to make a final reckoning: should she take her horrible secret to the grave? Or, should she summon up her ghosts and, in doing so, lay them to rest? An Inventory of Heaven is a lyrical and intimate meditation on the rural life, falling in love and the long passing of time.
Reviews
More intimate than Thomas Hardy, and as perceptive too, about the countryside and country people, Jane Feaver is a supremely compelling chronicler of rural isolation.
Jane Feaver has proved an expert at creating a sense of place ... tender, imaginative prose
It’s wonderful. The Inventory of Heaven is a revitalising exception to all the grim, mannered, clever books I read over the summer. The observation, the ear, the breadth of imaginative sympathy – all these reminded me why it’s worth reading fiction.
Accomplished in every way, this novel is a true delight.
Pitch perfect....Most memorable is Feaver's language - burnished and sturdily poetic with a saving comic streak