Awakening

Overview

One year after Darwin’s explosive publication of The Origin of Species, sisters Anna and Beatrice Pentecost awaken to a world shattered by science, radicalism, and the stirrings of feminist rebellion—a world of charismatic religious movements, Spiritualist séances, bitter loss, and medical trauma. Historical figures of the Victorian epoch wander through the backdrop of the novel, as Anna’s anomalous love for Lore Ritter and her friendship with freethinking and ambitious Miriam Sala carry her into areas of uncharted desire; while Beatrice, forced to choose between her beloved Will Anwyl and the evangelist Christian Ritter, is pulled between passion and duty. Each is torn by inner contradictions, but who will survive when the sisters fall into a fatal conflict with one another?

Reviews

“One of our most consistent and undervalued writers whose unsentimental, quietly revelatory novels have [continually] cropped up on the Booker and Orange shortlists.”  —Guardian

“Davies writes with an intensity which is simultaneously disturbing and exhilarating; her prose has a marvellous lyricism.”  —Times Literary Supplement

"[Awakening] is charged with sensitivity to the otherness of the past [...] [Davies' ] social comedy breathes life into an oppressive world. [...] Awakening burns with anger against the abuses of the past, while recognising that the present has no right to condescend." —Helen Dunmore, The Guardian

"George Eliot would be impressed." —Sally Zigmond, historicalnovelsociety.org

"Davies weaves this intricate web of faltering, painful relationships with great skill and writes very powerfully and movingly about the subtle half-tones and tentativeness of love, of childbirth, of loss as well as the horribly intrusive shock of male Victorian medical practice towards women." —Nicholas Murray, The Independent

"You leave these pages feeling more fully conscious of yourself and the world around you than you did when you began them. What more can you ask for from a book?" —John Lavin, Wales Arts Review

Author Biography

Stevie Davies is a professor of creative writing at Swansea University and the award-winning author of Boy Blue, winner of the Fawcett Society Book Prize; Closing the Book, long-listed for the Booker Prize; and The Element of Water, which was long-listed for the Booker Prize, the Orange Prize, and the Arts Council of Wales Book of the Year Award.