Whole Wide Beauty - Softcover

Emily Woof

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571254004 ISBN 13: 9780571254002

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2011

Synopsis

Katherine Freeman has drifted far from her life as a dancer. Married with a small child and working as a part-time teacher, she has become distant from her life, navigating the world in a dream, drawn one way and another by those who depend on her. Her father David is the charismatic director of the Broughton Poetry Foundation in Northumberland. His intense passion for his work masks a complicated inner world, and his already fraught relationship with Katherine is further threatened when she falls in love with his young colleague, Stephen Jericho. Stephen and Katherine risk everything as they are explore the extremes of their passionate connection. In this powerful debut, Emily Woof uses her unique descriptive talent and spare prose to examine the human need to engage. This is an exceptional novel about life's choices: love and family, art and commerce, ideals and compromise.

About this title

About the Author

Originally from Newcastle, Emily Woof is a well-known British actress. Her many film credits include the The Full Monty and the cult classic Velvet Goldmine. She has appeared in a variety of television dramas, including Miss Marple, and on stage in Neil Bartlett's production of Romeo And Juliet. She is also a prolific writer of drama for stage, screen, BBC Radio 4 and Film Four; in addition to writing she has also directed and starred in a number of these productions. This is her first novel.

From Publishers Weekly

In this stirring debut, the indefatigable David Freeman struggles to maintain his faltering poetry foundation while his daughter, Katherine, adrift after giving up life as a dancer to become a wife, mother, and part-time music teacher, strives to regain a sense of herself. David is a charismatic dynamo when it comes to his work, but he is far removed from his family, in part because of a long-held secret. When Katherine begins a wild affair with married-with-children poet Stephen Jericho, the couple's passion for each other reawakens them both: Stephen progresses with his epic poem and Katherine breaks through her numbing inertia. Meanwhile, David is diagnosed with cancer, which spurs him even more to find a deep-pocketed philanthropist for the foundation, while drawing him farther away from his family. Katherine's sudden admission of her affair to her parents becomes an unlikely bridge to reconnection, but she still must choose between Stephen and her husband. Though Woof's English characters outwardly maintain the stiffest of upper lips, their tumultuous inner worlds make for a sensuous, moving drama of love and family. (May)
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About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0571254004
• ISBN 13: 9780571254002
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 293