{"title":"Books by Shena Mackay","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"the-pink-lights","title":"The Pink Lights","description":"Shortlisted for the Booker, the Whitbread Prize and the Women's Prize for Fiction, Shena Mackay has been one of the UK's most fascinating writers for over sixty yearsBorn in Edinburgh, she grew up in Kent and came to fame before she was twenty when she published Dust Falls on Eugene Schlumberger \u0026amp; Toddler on the Run, two novellas written in her teens. Since then, she has published nine much-heralded novels and seven collections of short stories.   Now, she has written her first nonfiction, a short memoir, The Pink Lights and it's as dazzling, touching and as brilliantly observed as any of her wonderful novels.  Hers is a life well lived and characterised by luck and love. A peripatetic childhood was balanced by her mother's love of literature and music; at her mother's suggestion, and encouraged by an English teacher, she entered a poem for a Daily Mirror poetry competition, for which she won a prize.  But because Shena had abandoned school at sixteen, the £25 prize had to be squandered on pleated skirts and cardigans,' as she had to find employment.  The job that changed her life was in an antique shop in Chancery Lane in London, owned by the parents of David Sylvester, the art critic.  There she worked alongside the playwright Frank Marcus, best known for The Killing of Sister George and it was Marcus who read her first novella and introduced her to an agent and her first publisher. Through her friendship with David, she met many of the 20th century's most celebrated artists including Giacometti, Henry Moore, Frank Auerbach and David Hockney. And in Soho, in Muriel's infamous Colony Room, she met Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon among others.   But writing, marriage and motherhood took precedence and in the early 1970s she moved to the country with her husband and three children, re-emerging in the 1980s with a collection of stories, followed by more works including the Booker Shortlisted novel, The Orchard on Fire. Darkly surreal and funny, always deft, and highly memorable, her writing has attracted a legion of fierce admirers - ranging from Iris Murdoch to Julie Burchill, Ian Hamilton to Rachel Cooke.   Her book moves through childhood and youth, marriage and divorce and, eventually, to a new love.  The precariousness of a writer's life and the sheer capricious nature of luck - good and bad - are captured with an artist's eye and a novelist's perception.   Her memoir turns on life's absurdities and always, the lure of the pink lights.   'A national treasure' DAILY TELEGRAPH'She is a dazzling sort of writer' RACHEL COOKE'A highly original talent' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT'She writes like an angel wielding a scalpel' GUARDIAN","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":57682830819701,"sku":"9780349007007","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"Hardback","offer_id":57499201241461,"sku":"9780349006994","price":20.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780349007007_debb21c5-4e0e-4e1d-9ec4-6a7bc2d3ff26.jpg?v=1792511705"},{"product_id":"shena-mackay-memoir","title":"SHENA MACKAY MEMOIR","description":null,"brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57499202945397,"sku":"9780349007021","price":9.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}]},{"product_id":"music-upstairs","title":"Music Upstairs","description":null,"brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57499203699061,"sku":"9780349007151","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}]},{"product_id":"heligoland","title":"Heligoland","description":"LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZESHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE AND COSTA BOOK AWARDSAt her first sight of the Nautilus, it was as if the lustre of the building filled her heart and ran through her veins.   Stranded in suburban London, the Nautilus is an eccentric Modernist house built as a haven for bohemian artists, intellectuals and refugees. Now the Nautilus is past its heyday, its residents few and ageing: Celeste, a hippie architect-turned-activist; Francis, a poet of a bygone era; and bric-a-brac dealer Gus Crabb.   And then comes Rowena Snow. She has always been an outsider: an Indian orphan raised in Scotland, a lover of poetry shut out of intellectual circles. Rowena turns up at the Nautilus' door, anxious but curious, like a hermit crab seeking a home - searching for her own utopia.   'Elegant, elusive . . . The writing is superb' GUARDIAN'A national treasure . . . She has achieved that rarest of things for a writer' DAILY TELEGRAPH'Tender, funny and wonderfully realised' SUNDAY EXPRESS","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57499204518261,"sku":"9780349007250","price":8.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780349007250.jpg?v=1786694520"},{"product_id":"the-orchard-on-fire","title":"The Orchard on Fire","description":"SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE (1996) 'The Orchard on Fire is probably Mackay's most perfect book' PHILIP HENSHER, GUARDIAN 'A bitter-sweet, gentle novel, not given to grandstanding or preaching' TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT 'Shena Mackay has brought off something quite rare' ANITA BROOKNER, SPECTATOR 'What made the orchard miraculous was an abandoned railway carriage, set down as if by magic, its wheels gone, anchored by long grass and nettles. Ruby and I stared at it and each other . . . dark-windowed, out of place in a thicket of thorns, it was the perfect hide-out, house, the camp of our dreams'When April's parents move from London to rural Kent, she makes her first best friend: flame-haired, fearless Ruby. Their friendship is a refuge of secret hide-outs, dares and laughter - but beneath this surface of this childhood idyll lurks a darker reality. While Ruby hides the bruises from her brutal home life, April can't escape the attention of the immaculate Mr Greenridge, with his charming dachshund and his eyes like blue glass. Achingly nostalgic, funny and poignant, The Orchard on Fire is a bittersweet portrait of a 50s childhood, friendship and lost innocence.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57499279229301,"sku":"9780349023458","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780349023458.jpg?v=1790000859"},{"product_id":"dreams-of-dead-womens-handbags","title":"Dreams of Dead Women's Handbags","description":"In his dazzling collection of stories, Shena Mackay conjures up nightmares of the unexpected from the everyday world: murder in country villages; bizarre happenings in a seaside town; a decaying hotel where a colony of elderly eccentrics live out their days. A lonely child in a small Kent village finds warmth and community in a bohemian hilltop cottage; a writer who feels she has lost her gift dreams of a submerged handbag, its contents spilling onto the ocean floor; when a mother tries to wash 'the most beautiful dress in the world' for her daughter, its disintegration is the beginning of her own. Written with Mackay's distinctive richness of language, offbeat view, and blend of humour, compassion and sharp observation, these are stories from a master of the form.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57499280015733,"sku":"9780349023465","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780349023465.jpg?v=1790000859"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-shena-mackay.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}