Dimensions
153 x 234 x 36mm
Set at the end of the 18th century, in a small Hampshire town on the shores of the Solent, 'The Marriage of Souls' is more than an unusual love story. Stylish, erotic and mysterious, it is ultimately a novel of ideas.
The sudden departure of the elegant and enigmatic Mrs Celia Quill leaves a question mark over her reputation in the town of Lymington and in the mind of the young doctor Silas Grange. Against a backdrop of smoke and steam from the salt furnaces that line the shore, Grange pursues an obsessive, solitary quest for the truth about Mrs Quill, whose desertion has plunged him into ill health. As Grange's strength returns, and as revelation follows revelation, he is forced to confront not only Mrs Quill's past, but his own most profound emotions.
Warwick Collins's masterly new novel beautifully evokes the pace and pattern of the seashore, with its endlessly changing light, its wild-fowling and poaching, at a time when the ancient salt industry is threatened by cheaper manufacture elsewhere. To all this Collins adds a love story both sophisticated and sensual, describing a haunting anatomy of friendship and passion.
