"Exploring time, and many forms of love, longing and infatuation, this Virago Classic reissue of a Booker Prize shortlisted treasure is distinctly entertaining, and dances with witty invention."
First published in 1973, when it was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, Elizabeth Mavor’s A Green Equinox now takes a much deserved spot as a Virago Modern Classic. Mavor’s female characters really are a joy to discover — unconventional and unexpected. And, much like her characters, Mavor’s approach to storytelling is bold and unexpected in style and subject.
In the case of A Green Equinox, we spend time in the company of an antiquarian bookseller, Hero, between the spring and autumn equinoxes of a year that turns her life inside out and upside-down. At the start, Hero is engaged in an affair with Hugh, a curator of Rococo art. On forming something of a close bond with his wife, Hero feels as if she’s “living in two dimensions at once; it was like perpetually experiencing that first moment of biting into the first fruit of knowledge.” But that’s not where Hero’s upheavals end, for she also develops feelings for Hugh’s glorious widowed mother.
Presenting an unexpected entanglement of relationships that’ll have you wondering where on earth things are going to wind up, A Green Equinox is bold, witty and, quite often, bonkers, in the best possible way.
| Primary Genre | General Fiction |
| Other Genres: |
Hero Kinoull is an antiquarian bookseller whose sedate life in the picturesque English town of Beaudesert is turned upside down between the spring and autumn equinoxes of a single year. First her quiet but forbidden liaison with Hugh Shafto, the curator of the country's finest collection of Rococo art, comes to an abrupt halt when she develops an adoration for his straight-talking, do-gooding wife Belle.
But this relationship leads to other, even more unexpected feelings for Belle's widowed mother-in-law, the majestic Kate Shafto, who spends her days tending her garden and sailing her handmade boats in the waters of the miniature archipelago she's constructed in a disused gravel pit.
A Green Equinox features in the following genres: General Fiction, Sharing Diverse Voices, Shorter Reads, Fiction, Fiction: special features
A Green Equinox is available in Paperback
A Green Equinox was written by Elizabeth Mavor and published by Virago Press Ltd an imprint of Little, Brown Book Group
A Green Equinox has 224 pages
Yes it is part of Virago Modern Classics series
£8.99
