Product Description

Edwin Fisher is on holiday at the English seaside - but this revisiting of childhood haunts is no ordinary holiday. Edwin is seeking to understand the failure of his marriage to Meg, but it turns out that her parents are staying at the same resort - whether by accident or design - and are keen to patch up the relationship. As the past and his enigmatic wife loom larger, deeper truths emerge and the perspective shifts in unexpected ways. This is an extremely subtle story, a consummate portrait of English provincial life told with all Stanley Middleton's artistry and depth of feeling. It was joint winner of the Booker Prize in 1974. 'At first glance, or even at second, Stanley Middleton's world is easily recognizable...The excellence of art, for Middleton, is an exact vision of real things as they are. And because he is himself so exact an observer, his world at third glance can seem strange and disturbing or newly and brilliantly lit with colour' - A.S. Byatt.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #99404 in Books
• Published on: 2008-08-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From the Back Cover
Edwin Fisher is on holiday at the English seaside – but this revisiting of childhood haunts is no ordinary holiday. Edwin is seeking to understand the failure of his marriage to Meg, but it turns out that her parents are staying at the same resort – whether by accident or design – and are keen to patch up the relationship. As the past and his enigmatic wife loom larger, deeper truths emerge and the perspective shifts in unexpected ways.

This is an extremely subtle story, a consummate portrait of English provincial life told with all Stanley Middleton’s artistry and depth of feeling. It was joint winner of the Booker Prize in 1974.

‘At first glance, or even at second, Stanley Middleton’s world is easily recognizable… The excellence of art, for Middleton, is an exact vision of real things as they are. And because he is himself so exact an observer, his world at third glance can seem strange and disturbing or newly and brilliantly lit with colour.’ A.S. Byatt

About the Author
Stanley Middleton was joint winner of the Booker Prize with his novel Holiday. He lives in Nottingham, where most of his novels are set. Her Three Wise Men, his forty-fourth book, is available in Hutchinson hardback.

Customer Reviews

Holiday well worth taking
Stanley Middleton's 1974, Booker-Prize winning novel "Holiday" is worth the trip.
Our hero, Edwin Fisher, has retreated to the sanctity of seaside resort town where his parents vacationed when he was a boy. Here Edwin licks his wounds after yet another row with his wife. He ponders whether to return or to take his new-found freedom and run.
Middleton adroitly takes us through the thought processes of Fisher.
At 240 pages it's not a tomb but not beach reading either.
It is a worthy Booker winner. As an American reader the idiom of Middleton some times intrudes but this is an intelligent treatment of a topic which most people have pondered.