Francesca Kay

The author of our 2009 New Voices title, An Equal Stillness ...

Francesca Kay grew up in South-east Asia and India and has subsequently lived in Jamaica, the United States, Germany and Ireland. She now lives in Oxford with her family and works in British-Irish relations.

Nothing is what it seems. People and places change on acquaintance - sometimes beyond recognition. What may seem ordinary on the surface hides depths of experience and understanding. This is one of the themes in Francesca Kay's debut novel, An Equal Stillness, a biography of fictional female artist Jennet Mallow, whose life spans the great decades of war, social revolution and personal and artistic liberation.

About An Equal Stillness :

Jennet Mallow is born in Yorkshire in the 1920s but her interest in art and creativity alienates her from her family, her father who is a priest, her conventional sister and her emotionally stunted mother. Jennet moves to London in search of a more exciting life and finds it in her new environment and in the handsome and enigmatic figure of the painter David Heaton. When Jennet falls pregnant, her parents more or less force the two to marry. In the postwar austerity of the 1940s, the young couple struggles to make ends meet and Jennet finds that her home life is gradually eroding everything she has fought to achieve.

Read a sample chapter

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Name: Francesca Kay

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Current Home: Oxford

Similar Authors: Jackie Kay, Barbara Trapido