Imprint
- Sceptre
Prose: non-fiction, Fiction, Modern & contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
The stunning new novel from the acclaimed author of TRICK OF THE LIGHT and MAGPIE
In December 1922 Edith Thompson, a smart, bright, lower-middle class woman who worked in a milliner's shop, was tried for conspiring with her young lover Frederick Bywaters to murder her husband, Percy. The sensational trial, which took place in front of heaving crowds at the Old Bailey, unravelled a real life drama as exciting as any blockbuster: an illicit love affair, a back-street abortion, domestic violence, murder and a double execution. FRED AND EDIE draws together powerful threads between personal memory and public lives, between innocence and responsibility, and between fact and fiction. It is an exploration of a woman caught in the net of her own private fantasy and the conflicts of the era in which she lived, of her muddled attempt to defy convention and reshape her own destiny, and, finally, of the devastation she left in her wake.
Praise for Fred and Edie
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It will captivate readers ... The real triumph of the novel is to make the fictionalised truth sound utterly convincing - a case of fiction not so much stranger as stronger than fact. Edie is so wonderful, so bitterly honest about herself, especially her understanding of her own sensual nature. And the sex is beautifully written about. Jill Dawson magnificently gets into the woman's skin and makes the whole act sublime - Margaret Forster
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Jill Dawson's deft ability to map the territory of the heart, as well as the head, lends grace and conviction to this fictionalised version of a true story. FRED AND EDIE is a captivating account of a strangely impassioned, and compelling, love affair - Caryl Phillips
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Compelling reading - The Times
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Gripping ... an engrossing, passionate and tragic story - Daily Mail
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A haunting exploration of female desire and the tragic consequences when it finds itself repressed and thwarted. - Sunday Times
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A moving testimony to the desperation of unrequited love - The Times
Jill Dawson
Jill Dawson was born in Durham. She is the author of three novels: Trick of the Light, Magpie and Fred & Edie, which was shortlisted for the Whitbread Novel Award and the Orange Prize and translated into several languages. She is also an award-winning poet and has edited five anthologies, including Wild Ways: New Stories about Women on the Road (co-edited with Margo Daly), The Virago Book of Wicked Verse and the recent Gas and Air: Tales of Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond. She taught at Amherst College and is currently the Creative Writing Fellow at University of East Anglia in Norwich. She lives in the Fens with her partner and two sons.
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