The Feast

This summery rediscovered gem will make you nostalgic for 1940s seaside holidays: a Cornish hotel is mysteriously buried by a landslide, but what bought its eccentric guests together?'Tense, touching, human, dire, and funny, The Feast is a feast indeed.' Elizabeth BowenCornwall, Midsummer 1947. Reverend Seddon is on his annual seaside holiday with Father Bott; but to his disgruntlement, his host is busy writing a funeral sermon after a local disaster. Pendizack Manor Hotel - a coastal boarding house perched in a sleepy cove - has just been buried in the rubble of a collapsed cliff. Seven guests have perished beneath the Cornish boulders: but who are they, and what brought this strange assembly together for a moonlit feast before succumbing to this Act of God - or Man?Over the course of a week before the landslide, we are introduced to these holidaymakers in all their eccentric glory: the selfish aristocrat and her bullying offspring; slothful hotelier; snooping housekeeper; jilted chambermaid; bohemian authoress with her chauffeur toyboy; bereaved couple; poverty-stricken family; cranky canon and his terrified daughter. As guests of all classes and backgrounds are thrown together, friendships form, romances blossom, sins are revealed, and the cliff cracks widen ...'Kennedy is not only a romantic but an anarchist, and she knows the ways of men and women very well indeed.' Anita Brookner'Aptly named [for] it has Miss Kennedy's narrative skill; her distinction, her grace, above all, her peculiar magic.' Guardian