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The Narrow Land – Christine Dwyer Hickey

The Narrow Land – Christine Dwyer Hickey

This won the Walter Scott Historical Prize for Literature, so clearly I had to read it.

Here’s the blurb …

1950: late summer season on Cape Cod. Michael, a ten-year-old boy, is spending the summer with Richie and his glamorous but troubled mother. Left to their own devices, the boys meet a couple living nearby – the artists Jo and Edward Hopper – and an unlikely friendship is forged.

She, volatile, passionate and often irrational, suffers bouts of obsessive sexual jealousy. He, withdrawn and unwell, depressed by his inability to work, becomes besotted by Richie’s frail and beautiful Aunt Katherine who has not long to live – an infatuation he shares with young Michael.

A novel of loneliness and regret, the legacy of World War II and the ever-changing concept of the American Dream

I enjoyed it, certainly more than To Calais in Ordinary Time, which was on the short list. Three out of five.

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Filed under 3, Fiction, Historical Fiction