Nicola only went to buy cigarettes and upon returning finds a stranger in her apartment. He looks like her live-in boyfriend, Jonathan, but he can't actually be the dependable known quantity whom Nicola loves that goes by the name of Jonathan. Can he? Before Nicola stands a man who is strong and adorable just like the old Jonathan, only this one is no longer hers! This sad tale of love gone south still has its funny side. You have either to laugh or cry when you see, as acutely and elegantly as St John captures it here, the things women will do to hold on to love, and the things men will do to escape it. "St John's intelligence transforms a simple story into a much larger commentary on love and loss." - Mademoiselle "The Essence of the Thing grabs the reader's sympathy and attention from the startling first pages and doesn't let go." - Newsday "A brisk, sophisticated, and artful narrative" - New York Times Book Review

The Essence of the Thing: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Madeleine St. John

British & Irish

Carroll&Graf

A haunting and hilarious novel that offers a rare glimpse into the fragility and changing nature of the human heart, this sad tale of love gone south captures the things women will do to hold on to love, and the things men will do to escape it.

The Essence of the Thing

Contemporary

Carroll Graf Publishers

There's no nice way to say this ... I've decided - that is to say, I've come to the conclusion - that we should part ...'And with that conclusion. Nicola's troubles begin. She only nipped out to the off-licence to buy cigarettes, for God's sake, and she comes back to find this stranger in her sitting room! He looks like Jonathan, even talks like Jonathan (though, lawyer that he is, she still can't recall him expressing himself quite so stiffly and legalistically as this), but he can't actually be Jonathan. Can he?Solid as the Bank of England, steady as today's Telegraph: the whole point of Jonathan is his predictability. How can this be happening? Where is the man she loves? The ultimate known quantity, how did he become such a mystery all of a sudden?He's a rat. says Susannah: a pig. prefers Lizzie - yet as her friends make their way through the animal kingdom in search of an adequate epithet, all a desolate Nicola can see is the same old Jonathan - strong, adorable, handsome, hers. Except that, apparently, he isn't any more...A sad tale, it's true - but it has its funny side. You have to laugh when you see, as acutely, as elegantly as they're captured here, the things women will do to hold onto love, and the things men will do to escape it.

The Essence Of The Thing

Fourth Estate

From the Booker short-listed author of The Essence of theThing. Madeleine St John's new novel is a poignant, perceptive and deliciously funny portrait of modern life and an elegant anatomy of love. Her most beguiling novel to date. Madeleine St John's poignant and characteristically witty new novel tells the story of three people locked in an unhappy kaleidoscope of emotions and desires, none able to articulate the precise quality of their longing and dissatisfaction. There's Alex, miserable in his cold and calmly professional marriage, unable to leave because of his two children. Next comes Andrew, recently home from ten years in America, leaving an ex-wife and a beloved daughter on the other side of the world. And finally, there's Barbara, the enchanting and lustrous object of their affections, formidably self-possessed but strangely aimless and unfulfilled. With elegance and acuity, Madeleine St John chronicles their progress through numerous false starts, reversals and apprehensions; the result is a memorable anatomy of desire and its opposite -- despair.

A stairway to paradise

A Stairway to Paradise

A Pure Clear Light

The Text Publishing Company

The Essence of the Thing: Text Classics,

Women's Fiction

Text Publishing Australia

Sydney in the late 1950s. In Cocktail Frocks, on the second floor of the famous Goode's Department Store, the women in black are girding themselves for the Christmas rush. Lisa is the new Sales Assistance (Temporary). Across the floor and beyond the arch, she is about to meet the glamorous Continental refugee, Magda, guardian of the rose-pink cave of Model Gowns. Madeleine St John, a modern-day Jane Austen, conjures a vanished summer of innocence with the lightest touch and tenderest of comic instincts.

The Women in Black

Text Publishing

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Books by Madeleine St. John