Thomas And Mary: A Love Story

Author: Tim Parks

Stock information

General Fields

  • : 26.00 NZD
  • : 9781784702007
  • : Vintage Publishing
  • : Vintage
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  • : 0.368
  • : February 2017
  • : 198mm X 129mm
  • : United Kingdom
  • : 26.0
  • : January 2017
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  • : books

Special Fields

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  • : Tim Parks
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  • : Paperback
  • : 217
  • :
  • :
  • : 823.92
  • :
  • :
  • : 320
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Barcode 9781784702007
9781784702007

Description

'Somehow it seemed to him the only thing that would really solve the problem would be to return to the sea and find the old ring with their names and the wedding date engraved inside, in 22-carat gold, and put it on again and then the world would magically return to what it had been before. Many years before. This did not happen.' Thomas and Mary have been married for thirty years. They have two children, a dog, a house in the suburbs. But after years of drifting apart, things - finally - come to a head. In this love story in reverse, Tim Parks recounts what happens when youthful devotion has long given way to dog walking, separate bed times, and tensions over who left the fridge door open. Lurching from comedy to tragedy, via dependence, cold re-examination, tenderness and betrayal, Thomas and Mary is a fiercely intimate chronicle of a marriage - capturing the offshoots of pain sent through an entire family, when the couple at its heart decide it's all over.

Reviews

"In this darkly funny work, Parks offers a story that doesn't shy away from the complexity of relationships, and from the ineffability, indeed, impossibility, of the unmade decision." -- Ayesha Manazir Siddiqi Independent "Mordantly amusing, deeply sad novel... Plainly written, vivid portrait of a marriage... A cautionary tale for couples heedless of the care and kindness a good relationship requires, and a horror story for those who discover they are simply but irreparably mismatched." -- Rosemary Goring The Herald "A blackly comic study of a 30-year-old marriage." -- Arminta Wallace Irish Times "As effective an antidote to Valentine's Day as you could find." -- Stephanie Cross Daily Mail "Restless, lightly mordant tale of lust and love lost." -- Jeffrey Burke Mail on Sunday

Author description

Born in Manchester, Tim Parks grew up in London and studied at Cambridge and Harvard. In 1981 he moved to Italy where he has lived ever since. He is the acclaimed author of novels, non-fiction and essays, including Europa, Cleaver, A Season with Verona, Teach Us to Sit Still and Italian Ways. He has won the Somerset Maugham, Betty Trask and Llewellyn Rhys awards, and been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. He lectures on literary translation in Milan, writes for publications such as the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, and his many translations from the Italian include works by Moravia, Calvino, Calasso, Tabucchi and Machiavelli.