Overview
When Christopher Brooke is arrested under Regulation 18B in June 1940, a slow process of personal disintegration begins, affecting his family irreversibly. Irish farm girl Mary Byrne is hired as housekeeper for the Brooke household and proves an acute observer of the daily lives of Cynthia Brooke and her three children. But when Mary is shockingly expelled from the house upon Christopher's release from internment, 15-month-old Katie -- conceived on a prison leave and now speaking from adulthood -- takes over as narrator. Moving from the pre-war political era of Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, Mad Hatter delves into the wartime lives of Britons, and tracks them into the aftermath in a disturbing but ultimately transcendent story of a daughter's search for family history. Mad Hatter charts the gradual unravelling of a marriage and the tightening of its children in the devastation of post-war England as the story of the Brooke family moves inexorably to a tragic conclusion in which Mary Byrne is once again embraced by the family, but in a most surprising manner.
Full Product Details
Author: Amanda Hale
Publisher: Guernica Editions,Canada
Imprint: Guernica Editions,Canada
Volume: 164
Dimensions:
Width: 15.20cm
, Height: 2.50cm
, Length: 22.80cm
Weight: 0.625kg
ISBN: 9781771833905
ISBN 10: 1771833904
Pages: 462
Publication Date: 07 January 2020
Audience:
General/trade
,
General
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: Temporarily unavailable
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Reviews
If you think the fascist politics of Oswald Mosley is old hat, read Mad Hatter and think again. Amanda Hale, drawing on childhood experience, brings emotional intelligence to bear on the fatal marriage of personal and political. -- Ted Goodden, author of Glory Boy A beautiful book about a difficult story. This fictionalized memoir, following Christopher Brooke from pacifism into delusional extremism, is told with subtlety and compassion. I am left exhilarated by Amanda Hales ability to tell her experience with such insight and candour. -- Susan Crean, author of Finding Mr. Wong
Author Information
Amanda Hale has published three novels, two collections of linked fictions set in the Cuban town of Baracoa, and two poetry chapbooks. She won the Prism International prize for creative non-fiction for The Death of Pedro Ivn, and has twice been a finalist for the Relit Fiction award. Her novels and Cuban stories have been translated into Spanish; Sondeando la sangre was presented at the 2017 Havana International Book Fair. Hale is the librettist for Pomegranate, an opera set in ancient Pompeii, premiered in Toronto in 2019.
