LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZE AND COSTA BOOK AWARDS
Glimmering through the trees, the Nautilus waited, luminous in the gloaming, a vast pearly shell . . .
Stranded in suburban London, the shell-shaped Nautilus was built as a haven for bohemian artists, intellectuals and refugees in the 1930s. Now, at the end of the twentieth century, its residents are few and ageing: Celeste Zylberstein, architect-turned-activist; Francis Campion, a poet of a bygone era; and bric-a-brac dealer Gus Crabb.
Into this eccentric community comes Rowena Snow, like a hermit crab seeking a home. A permanent outsider – an orphan of Indian-Scottish heritage, without family and friends, a lover of poetry shut out of the artistic world – Rowena arrives at the door of the Nautilus in search of her own Utopia, the Heligoland of her childhood imagination.
Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize and longlisted for the Booker, this moving, funny, shimmeringly beautiful novel is Shena Mackay at her best.
‘She writes like an angel wielding a scalpel’ GUARDIAN
‘A national treasure . . . She has achieved that rarest of things for a writer’ DAILY TELEGRAPH
‘Tender, funny and wonderfully realised’ SUNDAY EXPRESS
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZE AND COSTA BOOK AWARDS
Glimmering through the trees, the Nautilus waited, luminous in the gloaming, a vast pearly shell . . .
Stranded in suburban London, the shell-shaped Nautilus was built as a haven for bohemian artists, intellectuals and refugees in the 1930s. Now, at the end of the twentieth century, its residents are few and ageing: Celeste Zylberstein, architect-turned-activist; Francis Campion, a poet of a bygone era; and bric-a-brac dealer Gus Crabb.
Into this eccentric community comes Rowena Snow, like a hermit crab seeking a home. A permanent outsider – an orphan of Indian-Scottish heritage, without family and friends, a lover of poetry shut out of the artistic world – Rowena arrives at the door of the Nautilus in search of her own Utopia, the Heligoland of her childhood imagination.
Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize and longlisted for the Booker, this moving, funny, shimmeringly beautiful novel is Shena Mackay at her best.
‘She writes like an angel wielding a scalpel’ GUARDIAN
‘A national treasure . . . She has achieved that rarest of things for a writer’ DAILY TELEGRAPH
‘Tender, funny and wonderfully realised’ SUNDAY EXPRESS
Reviews
Around the millennium, these lives are sweetened by the arrival of a different class of tenant: Jack-the-lad junk dealer Gus Crabb, and half-Indian, half-Scottish and late middle-aged Rowena, the novel's central characte
Tender, funny and wonderfully realised
An intriguing, witty and provocative story
A slender, intelligent fiction written in ravishing prose . . . If I read a better novel this year, I shall think myself lucky
Shena Mackay is a national treasure . . . She has achieved that rarest of things for a writer: creating a world that is utterly her own
With what tenderness, rage, wit and accuracy Mackay writes about loneliness and belonging . . . What a brilliant novel this is
Elegant, elusive . . . The writing is superb . . . [Mackay's] gentle mastery of language is quite beyond showy displays of technique
