The Undercliff Novels - Blue Slipper Bay

The second of The Undercliff Novels introduces new characters, although my old friends – Jane and Chas, Marguerite and Neptune, are still in the background. How could I leave them behind? The search for fulfilment is expressed through troubled relationships involving tragedy and deception and an exploration of what love – and the letting go of love - might mean. The little seaside town of Ventnor plays its part – and the half-imagined Blue Slipper Bay.

Outline:

When Sophie’s dependent mother dies and her deceitful husband leaves she puts her life on hold. She walks out of her demanding profession in mental health, sells her house and goes to stay with her old friend Jill, on the Isle of Wight before deciding what her next step might be. Jill, a psychologist, desperately needs Sophie to stay on the island for complex reasons. But Sophie makes new friends and begins to fashion a different life for herself, and as she grows stronger, Jill finds the unstable foundations of her own existence start to quake.

Nick has also turned his back on his past after the tragic death of his wife. He has been travelling, searching for peace of mind. On a Greek island he meets Kyp and Evie who run a seafood restaurant at Blue Slipper Bay on the Isle of Wight. They entice him back to England and he finds work rediscovering a lost garden, which suits his need for solitude. But, unless it is resolved, the past impacts on the present. Sophie, Jill and Nick all have to turn back before they can truly move forward.

Quotes:

There was something troubling Ash. Jill watched him from the balcony of Cormorants, their imposing Victorian house overlooking Ventnor beach. His pale sweatshirt picked up the glimmer of dawn. Spying, she thought, I’m spying on him and he wouldn’t like that. Ash never did anything underhand . . .

Nick wondered if Keri’s ashes might have found their way from the light water of Lake Tekapo, along underground streams, sensing their passage like migrating birds, merging with the drift of oceans, warm and cold, finding him in the dark waves of the English Channel that lapped Blue Slipper Bay . . .

Peter left Sophie on the morning that her mother died. It was April the first. Dazed and exhausted, she concluded she was being fooled . . .

Blue Slipper Bay was published in the UK by Transita in June 2007 and by Der Club Bertelsmann in July 2007. It will be published in 2008 by Random House Blanvalet, and also in large print and audio editions.