{"product_id":"9780671886097","title":"Sacred Country","description":"\u003cstrong\u003eSacred Country\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor(s): Rose Tremain\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"I have a secret to tell you, dear, and this is it: I am not Mary. That is a mistake. I am not a girl. I'm a boy.\" Mary's fight to become Martin, her claustrophobic small town, and her troubled family make up the core of this remarkable and intimate, emotional yet unsentimental novel. As daring as Virginia Woolf's \u003ci\u003eOrlando,\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eSacred Country\u003c\/i\u003e inspires us to reconsider the essence of gender, and proposes new insights in the unraveling of that timeless malady known as the human condition. As Mary's mother, Estelle, observes, \"There are no whole truths, just as there is no heart of the onion. There are only the dreams of the individual mind.\" \u003cbr\u003e Sweeping us through three decades, from the repressive English countryside of the fifties to the swinging London of the sixties to the rhinestone tackiness of seventies America, Rose Tremain unmasks the \"sacred country\" within us all.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eReview(s):\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe New Yorker\u003c\/i\u003e A beautiful, knowing novel about isolation and loneliness.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Wall Street Journal\u003c\/i\u003e An extraordinary novel....spare, pointed [and] extremely moving.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Village Voice Literary Supplement\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eSacred Country\u003c\/i\u003e is...about the unexpected and its pleasures, the thrill of rounding a corner and finding something is not at all what you thought, even when that something is yourself...brilliant.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e A book that we give to our friends and are glad to have read...Tremain gives us a precisely imagined landscape and...characters that we come to care deeply about.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Boston Sunday Globe\u003c\/i\u003e A stunning achievement.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe London Times Evening Standard\u003c\/i\u003e \u003ci\u003eSacred Country,\u003c\/i\u003e by even the most exacting standards, is an unqualified success.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e The writing in this novel is a sheer delight....skilled, intelligent storytelling at its best.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Literary Review\u003c\/i\u003e (London) There is no one like Tremain as far as the eye can see....Her book is one to admire and enjoy. It is funny, absorbing, and quite original. I've read nothing to touch it this year.\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Boston Sunday Globe\u003c\/i\u003e Rose Tremain's purpose is to probe and illumine the mystery of identity with particular poignancy and rare compassion....intricate and rewarding fiction.\u003cbr\u003eLos Angeles Times Mary's story is superficially bizarre, yet Tremain makes her not just real but moving and blithe....There is a hint of the magical or providential at work.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eISBN:  9780671886097\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e ","brand":"Washington Square Press","offers":[{"title":"Paperback \/ softback","offer_id":40590542471374,"sku":"9780671886097","price":22.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0600\/7029\/7806\/products\/O_f7f6bcd1-1214-479e-adf8-5d9599cdb354.jpg?v=1637739032","url":"https:\/\/pickwickbookshop.com\/products\/9780671886097","provider":"Pickwick Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}