Mary George of Allnorthover

Ellie, ironically, is the one who seems to achieve something like revelation, but, in a Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner reversal, recognises it as a form of madness. If there is anything in common among the girls in these novels, it is the threat of madness. In Mary George, it mostly comes from outside, in the obsession the town psychotic, Tom Hepple, has with her as his potential saviour.

Mary is the year-old daughter of separated parents, who lives with and is embarrassed by a mother in ankle bells and big kaftans, though Mary's style also runs to the bohemian. She wears ill-fitting charity shop costumes. Her father is an architect who used to work out of a disused chapel in their village of Allnorthover. When Tom, whose mother helped bring up Mary's father, returns after years in mental hospitals, secrets begin to emerge about the break-up of Mary's parents and how it was related to Mr George's possibly too-warm feelings for Tom's mother.

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Mary, meanwhile, in her last year in the local school, is floundering to find where she belongs - with her friend Billy, a pot-smoking, motorcycling, long-haired village boy; with her old friend Julie, working as a waitress in a tarty uniform; with the flamboyant, artistic family of the new doctor in town; or with the foppish art student who seems to take Mary up only to lay her aside; does she belong to the country or London, to her mother or her father or crazy Tom, or anywhere?

This novel is as much about England and village life as about Mary, who in many ways is a generic teenager of the artistic, sensitive type.

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The villagers are spiteful and gossipy but also kind to those among them who need help, in the awkward ways they can manage. There is a timelessness to the story, whose pointillism of style reminded me of Elizabeth Bowen. Set in the Seventies of oil crisis and drought, an old-fashioned, very English atmosphere is created, of doing-without as a way of life.

There may be no meaning here except to represent this life beautifully. Mouthing the Words takes a stylish interest in its characters, as if the author is saying about their weirdness, 'Look at this - can you believe it? Thelma's parents are upper-class monsters. Her mother abandons her after her birth, takes her back when she finds infant Thelma tied to a bannister by her breezy grandmother, then decides to have another baby because 'This one's fucked up already.

Now Tom believes that Mary has walked on water and that she is an angel who will show him how to reclaim his family home, which lies beneath the water.

Soon the village is aware of his obsession with Mary. Mary, who is experiencing all of the normal teenage angst first serious boyfriend, part-time jobs, and the history of her parents' divorce simply tries to avoid Tom; however, a collision is unavoidable. Greenlaw describes the village and its inhabitants in fine detail, portraying ancient feuds and family histories as the villagers interact with Tom, Mary, and one another.

This first novel is a moving exploration of Mary's maturation into adulthood. Recommended for larger public libraries.

Precise, lyrical prose distinguishes London poet Greenlaw's haunting debut novel, set in a dying English country village in the s. British reticence and punk music provide the backdrop for the story of year-old Mary George, a young woman growing up without direction.

Mary George Of Allnorthover

When Tom Hepple, a local who has spent the last decade in psychiatric care, returns to Allnorthover, he seeks out his childhood home, long since buried under the town's reservoir. An optical trick leads him to believe that he sees Mary walking on water above his home, a belief spurred by both his mental turmoil and the burden of family trauma. Although Tom's twin brother and other of his family members try to deflect Tom's obsession, he compulsively pursues the girl. Meanwhile, Mary simply tries to remain invisible as she contends with her own insecurities.

Both of her parents are off-kilter: Mary is also figuring out how to belong to a family, to a group of friends, to a boyfriend and her search dredges up further secrets and class tensions. At town festivals and rave shows, the pre-goth Mary and a band of sympathetic characters move slowly in different directions, but also toward an inexorable and tragic denouement. Greenlaw sets her secret-filled story in a meticulously realistic setting a village where all the families are intertwined by shared history and where fuel shortages and power cuts signal the disruption that will follow.

Rights sold in Germany and the Netherlands. July 9 Copyright Publishers Weekly Used with permission. No one's rated or reviewed this product yet. Skip to main content. Mary George of Allnorthover.

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This is the story of a teenager at several turning points in her life -- a richly detailed and suspenseful novel about various kinds of courtship gone wrong. The day Tom Hepple returns to the English village of Allnorthover, he stops at the local reservoir, beneath which lies his childhood home.

Looking for a sign, he sees a girl walking on water. Not just any girl -- it is Mary George, an uncommonly sympathetic seventeen-year-old, who seems at first to be more important to others than she is to herself. As nearsighted Mary tries to locate herself in the world, struggling with growing up, falling in love, and breaking away, Tom makes her the focus of his attempt to regain his past.