The Eyrie
- A new novel
NOW AVAILABLE IN PAPERBACK |
In The Eyrie Stevie
has created an unforgettable character in the figure of ‘Red
Dora’, the 92-year-old Socialist veteran of the Spanish Civil
War. Set in Oystermouth, the novel, which asks profound questions
about the modern world, is alive with humour, pathos and beauty.
The new novel is the first part of her two-book
contract with Weidenfeld: Stevie has lately returned from Egypt,
where she was researching the second book, the epic novel, Into
Suez, set in the 1950s in the run-up to the Suez invasion - to be
published by Weidenfeld in 2009.
AL Kennedy 3rd February 2007 The Guardian:
"Davies just writes, very precisely, sometimes wonderfully
- sometimes fiction, sometimes non-fiction - and always from the
heart. She does what a writer does - making beauty for strangers,
passing it on."
Read
AL Kennedy's review of The Eyrie
Murrough O’Brien in the Independent
on Sunday:
‘It is deeply joyful, and magically written, as full of sea
swell as of rasping barnacles.’
Nicolette Jones in the Independent:
'Davies has a tantalising way of writing glancingly about the important
developments, leaving the reader eager to know what happened. Meanwhile
inconsequentialities, lightly handled in conversational prose and
varied voices, accrete like mineral deposits, until they make something
substantial and solid. Enjoy at leisure.'
Saga Magazine:
'Davies deals sensitively but unsentimentally with lives less ordinary
than they seem, writing with warmth and wit, with and against the
currents of modern living.'
The Sunday Times 25 February 2007:
‘Deftly mapping the [characters’] interactions, and
the unwelcome infractions of the outside world, Davies’s novel
exhibits an agile wit, an intuitive understanding of human nature,
and an unsentimental clarity in its personalising of the political.’
Daily Telegraph 24 February 2007:
'...acute and compassionate observations.'
The Guardian 1 March 2008:
'That this is one of the fiercest books I have read in
years. It is about love, about politics, about the consolations
that only strangers can offer and is made all the more striking
in that it centres on a nonagenarian, Dora, in the final years of
her life. Vain, hawk-like Dora, a former communist and veteran of
the International Brigades, has no intention of going gently into
that good night. She takes lessons in computer hacking and exerts
a benign despotism over the other inhabitants of the Eyrie, a converted
mansion on the Swansea coast that is refuge to an almost uniformly
charming collection of lost souls. Cosy Welsh Eirlys, always ready
to mop up tears and ply her neighbours with a slice of bara brith,
is not nearly as comfortable as she seems, while young Hannah, an
engineer in search of her father, finds herself instead becoming
Dora's surrogate child, an act of replacement that helps Dora to
finally accept the death of her own wild daughter, lost decades
before. Davies is a meticulous, generous writer and her portrait
of a life on the brink of ending is so full of contrary, thrilling
vitality that you can practically taste the sap.'
OL
The Observer 16 March 2008:
'Quiet and intense, this is a story bereft of flash, but none the
poorer for it. Delicate, beautifully written, firmly imbued with
an unusually genuine grasp of time and place and character, only
the most hard-hearted reader will close The Eyrie without a satisfyingly
teary sigh.'
Jean Hannah Edelstein
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