The Feast

With a new foreword by Cathy Rentzenbrink, this glorious rediscovered gem exploring the mystery of a buried Cornish hotel will make you nostalgic for 1940s seaside holidays ...

'The miniature charm of a Baby Austen.' Observer
'Kennedy is not only a romantic but an anarchist.' Anita Brookner
'Tense, touching, human, dire, and funny ... A feast indeed.' Elizabeth Bowen

Cornwall, Midsummer 1947. Pendizack Manor Hotel has just been buried in the rubble of a collapsed cliff. Seven guests have perished, but what brought this strange assembly together for a moonlit feast before this Act of God - or Man?

Over the week before the landslide, we meet the hotel guests in all their eccentric glory: the selfish aristocrat; slothful hotelier; snooping housekeeper; bereaved couple; bohemian authoress; poverty-stricken children - and as friendships form and romances blossom, sins are revealed, and the cliff cracks widen . . .

Both a glorious portrait of seaside holidays in post-war Britain and a wise, witty fable, Margaret Kennedy's The Feast is a banquet indeed.