Winter in the Air: 'Masterpieces: hand yourself over to be enchanted.' (Guardian)

Sylvia Townsend Warner is a British author who has written several acclaimed books, including "Lolly Willowes." Her stories are known for their bittersweet tone, exploring the complexities of human relationships and the lives of outsiders. "The Garden House" is a collection of short stories that showcases her mastery of the short story form.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 272 pages
Publication date: 17 November 2022
Publisher: Faber & Faber

This Christmas, immerse yourself in the enchanting world of Sylvia Townsend Warner, the English genius behind the witchcraft classic, Lolly Willowes. Worth every penny for the book jacket alone, as it is exquisite and shivery, just like the stories within. By turns creepy, melancholic, horrifying, tragic, and beltingly romantic, this masterpiece will leave you spellbound.

The Sunday Times has hailed her as one of our finest writers, while Neil Gaiman has praised her as one of the most shamefully under-read great British authors of the past 100 years. Sarah Waters has described her work as "diminutive masterpieces," and The Times has declared her a "glinting perfection." Decades after her divorce, a lady returns to the village of her tumultuous marriage. A railway carriage hosts a charged schoolboy encounter. A murder raises fears of blackmail. A woman waits anxiously in a café before eloping to Paris. Another steals a friend's kitchen knife.

In these bittersweet tales, Sylvia Townsend Warner reveals her mastery of the short story, celebrated by the New Yorker for decades. She is a tragicomic chronicler of the heart's entanglements, from marriages and affairs to widowhood, and a champion of outsiders, whether single women, the elderly, or wartime refugees. Witty and subversive, her stories meld tradition and transgression, with secret sins and fetishes as much a feature of English life as eccentric aunts, country houses, and parish churches.

So, hand yourself over to be enchanted by the English genius behind Lolly Willowes this Christmas. Let her stories take you on a journey through the heart of England, where secrets and passions intertwine, and where the ordinary becomes extraordinary.

Dimension: 198 x 129 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780571375462
Edition number: Main