Edinburgh Summer Gliterary Lunch, August

Ocean
Polly Clark

The Author

Polly Clark was born in Canada and brought up in Scotland. Her debut novel, Larchfield, fictionalised a little-known period in the life of poet WH Auden and won the Mslexia Prize. Her follow-up, Tiger, was shortlisted for the Saltire Scottish Book of the Year. She is also the author of four collections of poetry, one of which was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize.

She divides her time between the west of Scotland and a houseboat in London. 

The Book

Caught in a terrorist explosion on the London Underground, inner-city schoolteacher Helen is pregnant and lost until a stranger leads her to safety then vanishes. Obsessed with finding him, she begins to lose her grip on reality – and her family.

As their marriage fractures, her husband Frank proposes a daring plan: sell up and sail the Atlantic with their son Nicholas and troubled foster daughter Sindi on the Innisfree, the boat on which the couple first fell in love. What begins as a daring bid for salvation turns into an epic journey. The ocean proves as wild and unpredictable as the heartbreak Helen is trying to outrun.

With a fiercely funny and maverick heroine at its helm, Ocean is a powerful exploration of the uncharted waters of the human heart. 

Praise for Polly Clark

‘A ferociously intense portrait of a mind, marriage and family in extreme turbulence’ Amanda Craig 

Photography copyright Murdo McLeod

Consider Yourself Kissed
Jessica Stanley

The Author

Jessica Stanley is an Australian novelist living in East London. She grew up in Melbourne, studied in Canberra, and worked in journalism, on the set of the TV show Neighbours, for the trade union movement, and on progressive political campaigns. Moving to the UK in 2011, she has been working as a freelance advertising copywriter and strategist. She has a long-running email newsletter for writers and readers: jessicastanley.substack.com 

The Book

 When she first meets Adam, Coralie is new to London and feeling adrift. But Adam is clever, witty, and (he insists) a quarter of an inch taller than the average British male. His charming four-year-old daughter, Zora, only adds to his appeal.

But ten years on, something important is missing from the life Coralie and Adam have built. Or maybe, having gained everything she dreamed of, Coralie has lost something she once had: herself.

Set against an eventful decade that included the soap opera of five Prime Ministers plus Brexit and Covid, Consider Yourself Kissed puts the subjects of love and family on a grand stage, showing how the intimate dramas in our homes inescapably compete for energy and attention with the shared public dramas of our times.

Told over ten years of one woman’s life, Consider Yourself Kissed is an unforgettable literary love story.

Praise for Jessica Stanley

‘Clever, joyful, familiar….and so funny’ Nina Stibbe

Photography copyright Sophie Davidson