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Spanish City
A haunting second novel from the acclaimed author of The Nudist Colony .
Little remains of the glamour of Setton, once the North East’s premier resort. The Spanish City is boarded up; its famous rollercoaster turning rapidly to rust. Only in Moscadini’s ice-cream parlour, with its glowing mural of an arcadian coastline, is there a hint of former glory. It is here that world-weary teacher Hal Price is brought by his teenage kidnappers to meet a ghost. As Hal relives the memories of his dancing days, he tells the boys a story – of wartime dreams and peacetime disappointments, of love, betrayal, death and resurrection.
Little remains of the glamour of Setton, once the North East’s premier resort. The Spanish City is boarded up; its famous rollercoaster turning rapidly to rust. Only in Moscadini’s ice-cream parlour, with its glowing mural of an arcadian coastline, is there a hint of former glory. It is here that world-weary teacher Hal Price is brought by his teenage kidnappers to meet a ghost. As Hal relives the memories of his dancing days, he tells the boys a story – of wartime dreams and peacetime disappointments, of love, betrayal, death and resurrection.
256 pages, Paperback
First published March 14, 2002
5 people want to read
About the author
Sarah May
68 books35 followersSarah May was born in Northumberland, England in 1972. She studied English at London University and Creative Writing at Lancaster University.
Her acclaimed first novel, The Nudist Colony (1999), was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. A bleak, menacing fable set in a violent and corrupt England, the story centres on 14-year-old Aesop and his manipulative mentor. Her second book, Spanish City (2002), is a novel set in a pleasure resort on the north-east coast of England and chronicling the evolution of pleasure across the twentieth century, for which she was jointly awarded a 2001 Amazon.co.uk Writers' Bursary. The Internationals, set in and around a Macedonian refugee camp during the 1999 Kosovo crisis, was published in 2003. Her fourth novel was The Rise and Fall of the Queen of Suburbia (2006). Her latest book is The Rise and Fall of a Domestic Diva (2008).
Sarah May lives in London.
Her acclaimed first novel, The Nudist Colony (1999), was shortlisted for the Guardian First Book Award. A bleak, menacing fable set in a violent and corrupt England, the story centres on 14-year-old Aesop and his manipulative mentor. Her second book, Spanish City (2002), is a novel set in a pleasure resort on the north-east coast of England and chronicling the evolution of pleasure across the twentieth century, for which she was jointly awarded a 2001 Amazon.co.uk Writers' Bursary. The Internationals, set in and around a Macedonian refugee camp during the 1999 Kosovo crisis, was published in 2003. Her fourth novel was The Rise and Fall of the Queen of Suburbia (2006). Her latest book is The Rise and Fall of a Domestic Diva (2008).
Sarah May lives in London.
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