Review
From the book jacket: "If I didn't spy, I'd be in the dark eternally. I live in a maze of
unknowing - Maisie's maze - and I hate it. I need to be informed."
Summer 1967: Thirteen-year-old Maisie is at her family's home, a decaying
medieval abbey in the heart of rural Suffolk. Lucas, a student and friend, is
painting a portrait of Maisie and her older sisters, Julia and Finn. In turn,
Maisie embarks upon a portrait of her own: She begins an account of her family
and of a summer in which their lives will irrevocably, and terribly, change.
She introduces us to arrogant, beautiful Julia; to intellectual, magnetic
Finn; to honorable, conventional Nicholas, a neighbor training to be a doctor;
and Gypsy-blooded Daniel Nunn, a village friend to the sisters and a longtime
idol of Maisie's.
More than twenty years later, Lucas's now-famous...
Beyond the Book
About the author: Sally Beauman was born in Devon, England and read English Literature at Girton
College, Cambridge where she graduated in 1966. Immediately after graduating, she went to live in America for three years,
first in Washington DC, and then New York. During her time there she traveled
extensively, visiting most of the states in the union: her experiences in the
South in the year prior to the assassination of Martin Luther King, provided
some of the background for her first novel,
Destiny (1987). It
earned her a record sum for a first novel: published in the US by Bantam, it
became a New York Times number 1 bestseller, and went on to top the bestseller
lists in the UK, Canada, Australia and South Africa. It has never been out of
print since,...
