For most of us, there is one person we can never stop loving. For Elkie Bonner, a grocer’s daughter from Northern Ireland, it’s Ivan Packenham, the sophisticated son of a landowner in County Londonderry who’s home for a visit. In a drunken moment, he asks her to ‘run away’ with him to Swinging London.
Praise for No Angel Hotel
‘Anne Aylor’s first novel is a finely crafted and very moving exploration of the youthful pain and the lasting passion of love... Aylor’s sensitive writing is a quiet reflection on the fragility of human feelings that leaves us with a lump in the throat.’
—Washington Post Book World
‘With a spare elegance that lives up to her publisher’s comparison—with the romances of Jean Rhys—Aylor’s first novel presents a passionate, gloomy story of abandoned innocence and abused love.’
—Kirkus Reviews
‘Anne Aylor has produced a novel of spellbinding intensity... Written in brief, ephemeral passages as if a more prolonged focus would scorch the page, this is an exhilarating first novel.’
—Yorkshire Post
‘Sexually frank, and with a touch of the faux-naif, Anne Aylor has a good eye, especially for the telling detail which is all her own.’
—London Evening Standard
‘Anne Aylor has produced that literary rarity, a brilliant first novel.’
—Pittsburgh Press
For most of us, there is one person we can never stop loving. For Elkie Bonner, a grocer’s daughter from Northern Ireland, it’s Ivan Packenham, the sophisticated son of a landowner in County Londonderry who’s home for a visit. In a drunken moment, he asks her to ‘run away’ with him to Swinging London.
Praise for No Angel Hotel
‘Anne Aylor’s first novel is a finely crafted and very moving exploration of the youthful pain and the lasting passion of love... Aylor’s sensitive writing is a quiet reflection on the fragility of human feelings that leaves us with a lump in the throat.’
—Washington Post Book World
‘With a spare elegance that lives up to her publisher’s comparison—with the romances of Jean Rhys—Aylor’s first novel presents a passionate, gloomy story of abandoned innocence and abused love.’
—Kirkus Reviews
‘Anne Aylor has produced a novel of spellbinding intensity... Written in brief, ephemeral passages as if a more prolonged focus would scorch the page, this is an exhilarating first novel.’
—Yorkshire Post
‘Sexually frank, and with a touch of the faux-naif, Anne Aylor has a good eye, especially for the telling detail which is all her own.’
—London Evening Standard
‘Anne Aylor has produced that literary rarity, a brilliant first novel.’
—Pittsburgh Press
Reading as an escape.
The Vietnam War places the novel in a specific historical context.
Have you been to the places you write about?
Does the heroine's family reject ballet as being something alien to their class?
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