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The Feast
Published by McNally Editions
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
Table of Contents
About The Book
"Kennedy is not only a romantic but an anarchist." —Anita Brookner
Summer, 1947. A bizarre catastrophe rocks a seaside village in Cornwall when a cliff tumbles down on the Pendizack Manor Hotel. The hotel is obliterated, and seven guests are killed in the disaster. Everyone else makes a narrow escape. As the survivors tell their stories, the events of the previous week are revealed, and a parade of sins exposed. Gluttony, Lecherousness, Sloth, Pride, Covetousness, Envy and Wrath: all are in residence at Pendizack Manor, and as the day of the disaster creeps closer, it becomes clear that who’s spared and who’s lost might not be as arbitrary as first assumed.
A modern upstairs-downstairs comedy with an old-fashioned morality play tucked away inside, The Feast is sly, kaleidoscopic, and utterly ingenious, a novel that only Margaret Kennedy could have written.
Summer, 1947. A bizarre catastrophe rocks a seaside village in Cornwall when a cliff tumbles down on the Pendizack Manor Hotel. The hotel is obliterated, and seven guests are killed in the disaster. Everyone else makes a narrow escape. As the survivors tell their stories, the events of the previous week are revealed, and a parade of sins exposed. Gluttony, Lecherousness, Sloth, Pride, Covetousness, Envy and Wrath: all are in residence at Pendizack Manor, and as the day of the disaster creeps closer, it becomes clear that who’s spared and who’s lost might not be as arbitrary as first assumed.
A modern upstairs-downstairs comedy with an old-fashioned morality play tucked away inside, The Feast is sly, kaleidoscopic, and utterly ingenious, a novel that only Margaret Kennedy could have written.
Product Details
- Publisher: McNally Editions (June 6, 2023)
- Length: 336 pages
- ISBN13: 9781946022516
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Raves and Reviews
"A treat from start to finish."
– Emylia Hall, The Guardian
"Hilarious and perceptive, here’s the perfect seaside holiday read. We’re in Cornwall in 1947, where a landslide has buried a hotel, fatally crushing guests in the rubble . . . Events leading up to the disaster are entertainingly revealed through the diaries, letters, thoughts, and conversations of the inmates of the hotel. And what an intriguing bunch they are: obnoxious children, an arty writer and her toy boy, nutty priest . . . snobs, slobs, and the lovelorn. The nail-biting tension to discover who actually survived the tragedy will keep you on the very edge of your deckchair.”
– Val Hennessy, Daily Mail
“Exquisite comedy . . . Tense, touching, human, dire, and funny, The Feast is a feast indeed.”
– Elizabeth Bowen
“In the preface to Margaret Kennedy’s sharply observed novel – originally published in 1950 … we learn that a cliff has collapsed on the family-run Pendizack Manor Hotel in postwar Cornwall, England, entombing guests and owner alike under a heap of giant boulders . . . A deep sense of foreboding thus hangs over the playful, witty story that ensues, involving the friendships and romances of seven characters—each subtly based on one of the seven deadly sins—at the hotel shortly before disaster struck.”
– Emily Donaldson, The Globe and Mail
"So full of pleasure that you could be forgiven for not seeing how clever it is."
– Cathy Rentzenbrink
“The Feast is aptly named . . . It has Miss Kennedy’s narrative skill, her distinction, her grace, above all, her peculiar magic.”
– Guardian
“Entertaining, beautifully written, and profound.”
– Tracy Chevalier
“Here again is a sort of madness, at which [Kennedy] is adept . . . A haunting sort of story.”
– Kirkus
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