Earth & Heaven

by Sue Gee

In the aftermath of the First World War, the painter Walter Cox cherishes the place of his childhood to keep the pulse of his art alive. Haunted by his work, his young daughter Meredith has her own fight: to quell the power of her inner life. Deeply affecting, shot through with a shimmering apprehension of the natural world, Earth and Heaven is about life's fragility, and the power of love and painting to disturb, renew and reveal us to ourselves.

Genres: Fiction

Paperback

First published May 3, 2001

About the author

Sue Gee was born in India, where her father was an Army officer. She had a her elder brother, Robert, now a retired radiographer living in Spain. She grew up on a Devon farm, and in a village in Leicestershire, before instaled in Surrey in 1960. She lived in north London for 27 years with the journalist Marek Mayer, they had a son, Jamie. She married Mayer in November 2003, less of two years before his death on 23th July 2005. Now, she lived in the town of Hay-on-Wye in the Welsh borders.

Published since 1980, her novel Letters From Prague, was serialised on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour and Her play, Ancient and Modern, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2004, with Juliet Stevenson in the lead role. Her novel The Hours of the Night which received wide critical acclaim and was the controversial winner of the 1997 Romantic Novel of the Year Award, an award she won again in 2004 by her novel Thin Air.

She was Programme Leader for the MA Writing programme at Middlesex University from 2000 to 2008. She is currently reading for a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of East Anglia. She has been awarded a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship.

Reviews

[Margaret · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book which will stay with me. Walter Cox, brought up in Kent in the early years of the 20the century, is - against the odds - a painter. We follow him from his home in Kent to the Slade School of Art and back to Kent with new wife Sarah, a wood engraver, and their friend, sculptor Euan. This beautifully observed book gravely details their lives, loves, losses and longings in a slow-moving story which beautifully conjures up the lives and landscape of the main protagonists. A book to savour.

[Lara · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my second Sue Gee book, and as with The Hours of the Night, the descriptions she uses makes the book come alive. You are walking through the country lanes at the height of summer, then shivering in the cottage in the depths of winter with the Walter, Sarah & Meredith. The characters are likeable, and you feel their grief and pain when their worst nightmare happens. I can't wait to read another Sue Gee very soon.

[Janet · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written, poignant story.

[Deborah Adams · Rating 5 out of 5]

Set mostly between the two world wars in England, this book follows the lives of three friends as they fall in love, have families and grow up. It is a very quite internal book, and touches on loss, doubt and how one sees light and creates art.
My description does not do it justice,I am a reader more than a writer. I liked the thoughtfulness of the characters very much and fund myself caring alot about them.

[Angela Lewis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A delightful read although a sad story. Sensitive, poetic and compelling.

[Romi · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very dry, very slow, hard to see the point or feel any Thor the detached characters. Not a great read.

[Christine Camp]

Beautiful book

[Crisscross]

A delightful read taking one into an intertwining of 3 worlds. The art world of the 20s and 30s, the Kent countryside and farming of that period and that of reactions to bereavement.

I suspect some slight agricultural anachronisms as well as the artistic one she confesses to, but that is nit-picking compared to the evidently very thorough research. Also some over-use of formulas for mixing future with present, no doubt a feature of the 'creative writing' course SG is a party to.

Look forward to coming across some of her more recent works.

[Tracy Grant · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very complex book, slow paced. I did enjoy it but felt there was too much left unsaid and the end left me unsattisfied