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Set in the 1890s, Close Relations is compulsive reading, full of the unexpected twists and turns that keep the pages turning. Michael Taylor’s characters burst onto the page with unremitting realism. With the skill of a born storyteller, he weaves a vividly atmospheric story around some remarkable people, drawing the reader deep into their lives to share their hopes, their dreams, their disappointments and their nightmares.
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SYNOPSIS Algie Stokes, the only son of a lockkeeper, has ambition and ideas enough to make his way honestly in the world. To begin, there is one girl in his life, Harriet Meese, plain but a very good catch. Then he meets Marigold Bingham, the exact opposite, astonishingly pretty and adorable, but resigned to living and working in poverty with her family on a canal boat. Yet it is a love match . . . until he meets Aurelia, elegant, sensitive and utterly beautiful but, unhappily, the wife of Algie’s callous employer, Benjamin Sampson. There are two other women in Algie’s life: his mother, devoted wife of Will Stokes, a beauty of her generation; and Kate, Algie's flighty, ambitious sister. Kate loves only herself and has her own ideas of how to make her mark, with disastrous consequences for everybody. Always in the background is the enigmatic Murdoch Osborne, widower, established local trader, amateur thespian, ladies’ man, and old enough to be Algie’s father . . . Five very different women. Two very significant men . . . Each plays a major role in Algie’s life. All contribute in their very different ways to his traumas, his triumphs and his emotions, which are tested to the limit. |
PUBLISHING DETAIL Hodder & Stoughton In Coronet paperback from
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REVIEW "Once again Michael Taylor has produced a winning formula. He writes so fluently and vividly that it is no wonder he has attracted such a large following. Romantic sagas have traditionally been the province of female writers, but Michael Taylor convincingly breaks the mould. He is a born storyteller with a great sense of history and a talent for writing interesting characters and memorable prose." | ||
| Close Relations features a pub called the Bottle and Glass, which once stood at Buckpool in Brierley Hill, and which has now been authentically rebuilt at the Black Country Living Museum. There, the pub is portrayed as it was in 1910, little different to how it would have been in the 1890s, sawdust, spittoons and all, when frequented by our hero Algie Stokes. It serves real Black Country ale and traditional food. |  | |
