The Cast Iron Shore
About the Book:
‘This is a capacious and wide-ranging book, not just about individuals but about the history they move through. Whether the scene is Liverpool in the Blitz, a potato-chip factory in the prairies or a seedy hotel room in Hanoi, the writing is immediate … Grant approaches each character with insight and a tart sympathy’ Hilary Mantel, Literary Review
Sybil Ross has been brought up by her Jewish furrier father and style-obsessed mother as an empty-headed fashion plate. But on the worst night of Liverpool’s blitz she uncovers a secret that leaves her disorientated. When the war is over, Sybil embarks on a voyage that leads her to the very edge of America, and to a final choice.
The Cast Iron Shore is a beautiful evocation of one woman’s journey from the 1930s to the 1990s, combining the personal and political in an outstanding first novel.
Availability:
Published by Virago
Paperback | ISBN: 9781844086481 | RRP: £8.99
Where to buy this title:
Amazon.co.uk | Book Depository | Play.com | Waterstone’s | WHSmith
Reviews
‘Witty, stirring, formidable, above all readable.’
- Angus Calder, Scotland on Sunday
‘This super-subtle work is like a delicately spiced dish whose aftertaste testifies to the chef’s skill: more striking in retrospect.’
- Time Out
‘Linda Grant’s remarkably accomplished first novel is piercingly sad.’
- The Guardian
‘Grant writes with an elegant restraint and honesty which suit her themes. The narrative, with its portrait of post-war American society in the 1940s and 1950s, has all the complexity of real life but leaves no detail unresolved. The character of Sybil, prosaic, strong-willed, self-absorbed, sexy and charming, is entirely credible, a woman belonging both to her time and to herself’
- Jewish Chronicle
‘Intelligent and ambitious. . . The Cast Iron Shore is a novel of ideas, and it aspires almost passionately – to address questions which can only be called metaphysical: of freedom and identity, of purpose and becoming… fascinating.’
- Times Literary Supplement
‘A remarkable chronicle of the second half of the twentieth century… Grant’s outstanding novel demonstrates a commendable ambivalence towards its utopian socialist characters. She offers us big ideas and a clever plot, along with some truly fine writing.’
- Daily Telegraph
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