{"title":"Books by Rosalind Brackenbury","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780648690924","title":"A Day to Remember to Forget","description":"\u003cp\u003eLucy and Philip are a progressive young couple in a period of extraordinary change – the late 1960s. Considerations of  marriage and the purchase of their first house put them in the way of tradition, but they both feel the huge gap between themselves and the older generation. However, though they have the strong egos of the young, they are not foolish enough to think that they have nothing to learn.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eHaving finally identified what will be their romantic new home in a remote village in Norfolk, they head to Philip’s parents’ suburban house to celebrate his mother’s birthday. Here, all of Philip’s buried antagonism towards his conservative and conventional family explodes in a series of sniping arguments which cast hurt in all directions and uncover old wounds. His relationship with his unfulfilled, fussing mother is particularly strained. Lucy can only look on as, aware as she already is of his frustrations, she sees Philip in a new light. Her questioning mood is bolstered by an unexpected visit to Mrs Fletcher, their elderly next door neighbour whose husband, also named Philip, died long ago in mysterious circumstances. Lucy feels increasingly trapped by the family’s nervous irritability, the atmosphere of turbulence and her own uncertainties about the future.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWith concentrated precision and revealing poetic touches, Rosalind Brackenbury’s first novel explores the clash of modes between those whose lives seem dedicated to a new truth and those whose epoch seems to be slipping away. In scenes of delicate sensory detail, she brilliantly pinpoints time taking its inevitable toll filament by filament, all the while exposing the one constant which can be relied upon – human frailty.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56292771758453,"sku":"9780648690924","price":10.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780648690924_1405ad3d-7e72-4287-95f5-c7cff655dfa3.jpg?v=1786014734"},{"product_id":"9780648920441","title":"A Virtual Image","description":"\u003cp\u003eAnna Parrish and Ruby Smith have been intimate friends from childhood. Anna is blonde, coolly interrogative, more traditionally beautiful and, in subtle senses, dominant. Ruby is dark-haired, more impulsive, less classically attractive and, in small but important ways, allows Anna to lead.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eNow young women, they plan a rendezvous at an artists' workshop in the country in central France. In the charged world as the sixties turn into the seventies, their lives are full of sensual imagining, the desire for freedom and questing ardour for what they haven't yet discovered. Having visited some friends briefly, Ruby heads to their meeting-place, only to discover that Anna has never arrived, and that the workshops are next to useless. Acting on surmise and rumour she follows the trail that she thinks Anna will have taken, to the south and the marshy wilds of the Camargue. There she meets Caleb 'Caley' Hanson, an American poet, friend of Ruby's friends, and Anna's happenstance lover for a single night. He is also looking for Anna, trying to understand why she left so suddenly. He and Ruby find some solace together, and perhaps the beginnings of something more, enveloped in the burning heat, pungent smells and rich tastes of a southern summer.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut Anna isn't there. Where has she gone? Is there something sinister underneath her absence? Or is she simply following her own lead as usual? Ruby and Caley set off north again to try to find out, and drive headlong into a totally unexpected situation that challenges them to their utmost.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn this sensuous, dreamlike work, first published in 1971, Rosalind Brackenbury probes the intense and complex territory of friendship and love as it ebbs and flows in young hearts and minds responding to the call of a brave new world. The precise command of seductive poetic evocation, which has since become the singular hallmark of her writing, is already astonishingly mature in this, her second novel.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56293966840181,"sku":"9780648920441","price":10.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780648920441_02866287-9cbd-4227-88e9-0d5eb0730e73.jpg?v=1786014791"},{"product_id":"9781763565678","title":"No Such Thing as a Free Lunch","description":"\u003cp\u003eVibrant short stories have always been an integral part of Rosalind Brackenbury's output. In 1975, with three astonishing novels behind her, she collected together 14 of the best to date. \u003cem\u003eNo Such Thing as a Free Lunch\u003c\/em\u003e was published as a thick, stapled booklet by a tiny press in Leicester, with illustrations by her then husband. It has since become the most elusive of all her catalogue, an absolute rarity.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThese stories showcase Brackenbury's intense, visual and sensual style applied to would-be familiar moments: in \u003cem\u003eThe Visitor\u003c\/em\u003e, a wandering friend suddenly reappearing in the life of a pregnant young couple in their first staleness causes a new vitalisation; in \u003cem\u003eA Bird Flew In\u003c\/em\u003e a young girl undergoes a crucial day of her childhood with a wilder friend; in \u003cem\u003eOne in a Thousand\u003c\/em\u003e the struggling, socially-outcast mother of a 'difficult' boy finds a sympathetic listener in a fellow theatregoer, and reveals what she sees as her great sacrifice.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe volume also includes two groups of pieces: \u003cem\u003eLemmings, Revolution \u003c\/em\u003eand\u003cem\u003e The World's End\u003c\/em\u003e posit the strange meeting between ordinary domestic life and chilling scenarios where the usual certainties of life seem to be failing; the title story, as well as \u003cem\u003eEn vacances, En voyage, A la montagne\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eDans le train\u003c\/em\u003e vividly symbolise the enlivening and catalysing quality of travel in France, where relationships are propelled into new clarity by new surroundings.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe renowned writer A. L. Kennedy looks back at this extraordinarily bold and tactile collection in an introduction written specially for this new edition.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56304035922293,"sku":"9781763565678","price":13.95,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781763565678_04b48888-e584-4e07-85f5-5234e12a7b26.jpg?v=1786024806"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-rosalind-brackenbury.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}