Letters from an Unknown Woman (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781611453126)

With her children evacuated and her husband at the front, Tory Pace is grudgingly sharing the family home with her irascible mother; working at the local gelatin factory--to help the war effort--and generally doing just about as well as could be expected in difficult times. Her quiet life is thrown into turmoil, however, when her prisoner-of-war husband, Donald, makes an outrageous demand for sexual gratification. He wants a dirty letter Horrified, at first, that Donald is being turned into some sort of monster by the Nazis, Tory's disgust gradually gives way to a sense of marital duty, and taking in the libraries, bookshops, public conveniences and barbers' shops of South-East London, she begins a quest to master the language of carnal desire: a quest that takes a sudden and unexpected turn into far more dangerous territory. Beginning with an act of unintentional cannibalism, and flirting with a scheme to end world hunger by the use of protein pills, Letters from an Unknown Woman ranges widely across the Continent and yet always returns home: to family, to people, to relationships. Woodward offers a prescient examination of the ways in which we both nurture and consume each other in the face of adversity.

Author: Gerard Woodward
ISBN-10: 1611453127
ISBN-13: 9781611453126
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Language: English
Published: 10/10/2011
Pages: 352
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 9.22h x 6.29w x 1.32d

Review Citation(s):
Publishers Weekly 08/29/2011
Booklist 09/15/2011 pg. 25
New York Times Book Review 10/09/2011 pg. 38
Shelf Awareness 10/20/2011