FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF REBECCA
'Perhaps we shall not see each other again. I will write to you, though, and tell you, as best I can, the story of your family. A glass-blower, remember, breathes life into a vessel, giving it shape and form and sometimes beauty; but he can with that same breath, shatter and destroy it'
Faithful to her word, Sophie Duval reveals to her long-lost nephew the tragic story of a family of master craftsmen in eighteenth-century France. The world of the glass-blowers has its own traditions, it's own language - and its own rules.
'If you marry into glass' Pierre Labbe warns his daughter, 'you will say goodbye to everything familiar, and enter a closed world'. But crashing into this world comes the violence and terror of the French Revolution against which, the family struggles to survive.
The Glass Blowers is a remarkable achievement - an imaginative and exciting reworking of du Maurier's own family history.
Daphne du Maurier (1907-89) was born in London, the daughter of the famous actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and granddaughter of George du Maurier, the author and artist. In 1931 her first novel, The Loving Spirit, was published. A biography of her father and three other novels followed, but it was the novel Rebecca that launched her into the literary stratosphere and made her one of the most popular authors of her day. In 1932, du Maurier married Major Frederick Browning, with whom she had three children.
Many of du Maurier's bestselling novels and short stories were adapted into award-winning films, including Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds and Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now. In 1969 du Maurier was awarded a DBE. She lived most of her life in Cornwall, the setting for many of her books.
Title: The Glass-Blowers
Author: Daphne Du Maurier
ISBN: 9781844080656
Binding:
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Publication Date: 2004-06-03
Number of Pages: 384
Weight: 0.2995 kg
No other popular writer has so triumphantly defied classification ... She satisfied all the questionable criteria of popular fiction and yet satisfied the exacting requirements of real literature , something very few novelists ever do * Margaret Forster *
She wrote exciting plots, she was highly skilled at arousing suspense, and she was, too, a writer of fearless originality * Guardian *