Looking for Home reimagines the passionate but complicated affair between the poet Rainer Maria Rilke and the painter Baladine Klossowska, his beloved ‘Merline’. A series of letters between the two is discovered by Elinor Kay, an art critic researching the life of the painter Balthus, Merline’s precocious and gifted son. Eli finds herself drawn deeper into the letters and the world they hint at tantalisingly, as they begin to take on significant parallels in her own life.
Looking for Home looks unflinchingly at what it is to surrender one’s heart to love, and to live in a state of restless exile, hoping for recognition, companionship, and a heart to love back.
Beasts and Lovers are modern versions of folk or fairy tales. They come from some deep place in my psyche, which threw up characters and images that simply insisted on being recognised. I hope that as a result I have created some archetypal stories that others will connect with.
A volume of seven short stories, pub. Beggar Books
A young girl on her first foreign holiday is kidnapped by a group of Corsican nationalists. Held prisoner in an isolated farmhouse and forced to share the life of strangers, she finds herself reconsidering her own values and those of her captors.
A novel published by William Collins in 1986
ISBN 0-00-184606-X