Sue Gee
Author of Reading in Bed
About the Author
Sue Gee teaches on the BA Writing Programme at Middlesex University.
Works by Sue Gee
Associated Works
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1947
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Middlesex University
Goldsmiths College, University of London - Occupations
- novelist
- Relationships
- Mayer, Marek (husband)
- Short biography
- Sue Gee was born in India, where her father was an Army officer. She has an elder brother, Robert, now a retired radiographer living in Spain. She grew up on a Devon farm, and in a village in Leicestershire, before being installed in Surrey in 1960. She lived in north London for 27 years with the journalist Marek Mayer, they had a son, Jamie. She married Mayer in November 2003, less than two years before his death on 23rd July 2005. Now, she lives in the town of Hay-on-Wye in the Welsh borders.
Published in 1980, her novel Letters From Prague, was serialised on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour and her play, Ancient and Modern, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2004, with Juliet Stevenson in the lead role. Her novel The Hours of the Night which received wide critical acclaim was the controversial winner of the 1997 Romantic Novel of the Year Award, an award she won again in 2004 with her novel Thin Air.
She was Programme Leader for the MA Writing programme at Middlesex University from 2000 to 2008. She is currently reading for a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of East Anglia. She has been awarded a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship. - Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- India
- Places of residence
- Leicestershire, England, UK
Surrey, England, UK
Hay-on-Wye, Powys, Wales, UK
London, England, UK - Associated Place (for map)
- England, UK
Members
Reviews
[This is a review I wrote in 2008]
** Beautiful, lyrical story of restrained love and old-fashioned values.**
Sue Gee has created here a love story with true depth of feeling, displaying the sometimes darker side of country life in Victorian England. A melody of prose surrounds her central character, a young curate sent to assist an ailing vicar at a Herefordshire parish in the winter of 1860.
The young Richard Allen, still mourning his father's recent death, displays a genuine love for his show more God, his family whom he has left behind, the rural community he is to serve, and the countryside around his new basic and rustic home. However, all of his simple and profound ideals are challenged when he falls helplessly in love with a young married woman of important social standing. There is a wonderful purity and innocence to this love, and yet the young curate clearly also has a geniune talent for his vocation serving God... a very difficult predicament to be in and you can only feel sympathy for this young idealistic man.
The story is beautifully told; a compelling read. You cannot rush this book - you simply have to go with it at its own pace and I slowed my, usually quick, reading pace to appreciate this novel at its best. So much more than just another historical romance, I can recommended this novel highly. show less
** Beautiful, lyrical story of restrained love and old-fashioned values.**
Sue Gee has created here a love story with true depth of feeling, displaying the sometimes darker side of country life in Victorian England. A melody of prose surrounds her central character, a young curate sent to assist an ailing vicar at a Herefordshire parish in the winter of 1860.
The young Richard Allen, still mourning his father's recent death, displays a genuine love for his show more God, his family whom he has left behind, the rural community he is to serve, and the countryside around his new basic and rustic home. However, all of his simple and profound ideals are challenged when he falls helplessly in love with a young married woman of important social standing. There is a wonderful purity and innocence to this love, and yet the young curate clearly also has a geniune talent for his vocation serving God... a very difficult predicament to be in and you can only feel sympathy for this young idealistic man.
The story is beautifully told; a compelling read. You cannot rush this book - you simply have to go with it at its own pace and I slowed my, usually quick, reading pace to appreciate this novel at its best. So much more than just another historical romance, I can recommended this novel highly. show less
I've just finished reading this book and loved every single minute of it. It's the story of Dido and Georgia, friends since university, who happened to marry two men who were also friends with each other. Lovely long marriages ensued, but sadly, as the book opens, Henry, Georgia's husband, has recently passed away. The parts of the book relating to this brought lumps to my throat, not because they were overly emotional scenes, but because they were understated, yet still so moving. At the show more same time, Dido and Jeffrey have their own problems to deal with.
The book starts with the two women returning from a book festival at Hay on Wye, and throughout the book there are various literary references, which work very well.
There are no speech marks in this book, with all dialogue being indicated by a dash only. For a short time at the beginning it required a little more concentration than usual, but I quickly got used to it and it all flowed so well that I began not to even notice the lack of speech marks.
This is my first Sue Gee book, but it won't be my last. Don't be fooled by the chick-lit style cover - this is a book with real depth and emotion, and I really cared about the characters. Highly recommended. show less
The book starts with the two women returning from a book festival at Hay on Wye, and throughout the book there are various literary references, which work very well.
There are no speech marks in this book, with all dialogue being indicated by a dash only. For a short time at the beginning it required a little more concentration than usual, but I quickly got used to it and it all flowed so well that I began not to even notice the lack of speech marks.
This is my first Sue Gee book, but it won't be my last. Don't be fooled by the chick-lit style cover - this is a book with real depth and emotion, and I really cared about the characters. Highly recommended. show less
Earth and Heaven is an exquisitely written, slow-buring story about families, memory, the trauma of loss and war, and above all about the creation of art in the years between the two world wars. The romance between the main protagonists, Walter Cox and Sarah Lewis, who meet at the Slade School of Art at the University of London in the 1920s, is thoughtful, tender and realistic. They have two children, Meredith and Geoffrey, but tragedy and loss threaten to destroy their idyll. Meredith grows show more to adulthood in this shadow, and falls in love with a family friend closer to her father's age, who is haunted by his wartime experiences in the trenches of France. The descriptions of inter-war London, of rural Kent, where Walter and Sarah move to create their art, and of the process and thought behind the creation of art are beautifully crafted - much of it feels like stepping into a painting show less
I loved it! Beautifully written - gentle, slow, full of love for the countryside and an altogether slower way of life in Victorian times. It reads like a kinder cousin of Thomas Hardy - similar in the themes and integral role of the natural world, but not so grindingly miserable and grim. The ending was a joy - I had to re-read the last 2 chapters just to savour it all over again. I thought I knew where it was all heading but she pulled it round wonderfully.
Awards
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Statistics
- Works
- 14
- Also by
- 16
- Members
- 498
- Popularity
- #49,659
- Rating
- 3.7
- Reviews
- 17
- ISBNs
- 70
- Languages
- 1