Publisher's Synopsis
SECOND EDITION of this remarkable novel by prize-winning poet GAVIN BANTOCK. Two young men, a girl - and a house by the sea. In the dunes a mother's ashes, and in the sea a mysterious power. Set in the Welsh town of Harlieg in the late 1950s, this is a story of young minds struggling for self-expression, in a dramatic world of misunderstandings, gnawing frustrations, heady passions and psychical experiences. Around them, the wide expanse of the beach, whistling sandhills, distant mountains and open sky, and the ever-present sound of the waves. Who or what is the Old Woman of the Sea? Gradually she impresses herself on the three young people, who emerge, changed and shaken, to leave for the adult world inland.Bruce Dinwiddy, twenty-three, an aspiring poet but innocent of the world, has been given permission by his father to stay at the family holiday house at the very edge of the sea. He has invited there his young friend Stephen Pewit, who at nineteen is already a failed child-prodigy, a drop-out and an incorrigible rebel. Bruce hopes the beauty of the surroundings and calm isolation of the house will enable Stephen, who also hopes to be a writer, to develop a sense of stability and to settle down to some steady work; but things turn out very differently. The two friends become involved with disturbing people from the hotel and the college for delinquents near the house, in particular with a teenage girl-Vera Nicolson, who though a brilliant artist is nymphomaniacal. Conflicts develop and intensify. Intense soul-searching, emotional crises, and humorous episodes. The story develops and reaches climaxes along with clear-cut changes in the weather, and fascinating glimpses into the imagination-world of the principal characters.
