Nanda Gray, the daughter of a Catholic convert, is nine when she is sent to the Convent of Five Wounds. Quick-witted, resilient and eager to please, she accepts this closed world where, with all the enthusiasm of the outsider, her desires and passions become only those the school permits. Her only deviation from total obedience is the passionate friendships she makes.
Convent life is perfectly captured - the smell of beeswax and incense; the petty cruelties of the nuns; the eccentricities of Nanda's school friends.
Antonia White was born in 1899 and educated at in London at St. Paul's and RADA. She worked as a journalist and in the Foreign Office.
Title: Frost in May (Virago modern classics)
Author: Antonia White
ISBN: 9780860680499
Binding:
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Publication Date: 1998-11-05
Number of Pages: 224
Weight: 0.1996 kg
Intense, troubling, semi-miraculous . . . It is not the only school story to be a classic; but I can think of no other that is a work of art * ELIZABETH BOWEN *
Frost in May is the unsurpassed novel of convent school life. This story of a clash between a determined young girl and an authoritarian regime is both perceptive and painfully emotional, convincing in every detail * HERMIONE LEE, OBSERVER *
A masterpiece. Beautifully written, it is a calm and factual record of the slow death of the soul * SELINA HASTINGS *
Evelyn Waugh called [her] one of the very best novelists of the day a title she still deserves * CAROL SHIELDS *