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Caroline
  • Published: 15 July 2012
  • ISBN: 9780099548683
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 160
  • RRP: $26.99

Caroline

A Mystery

Formats & editions
EBook
1 Mar 2011
Paperback
15 July 2012
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When Mr Shaw meets the beguiling and enigmatic Caroline, she changes his life. But Caroline is a donkey, and their happiness is soon threatened.

Mr Shaw works for an insurance company, at a desk, in an office, in a city. One year, during his family summer holiday, his world is turned upside down when he meets Caroline. Caroline, whose eyes a man could drown in. Caroline, who likes a spring onion or two. Caroline, who is in fact a donkey. To the outrage of his neighbours and the quiet bemusement of his wife, he walks her back to the city, builds her a stable and spends the evenings encouraging her talent for playing chess. She accompanies him to his office, charms his colleagues, earns a very positive annual appraisal and is missed more than her master when he retires. Most importantly, Caroline has reawoken something in Mr Shaw that had seemed lost, some appetite for life and its possibilities, and a sense of the extraordinary that lives within the everyday. But can this idyll last? Are chess, radish tops and trips to the museum enough to nourish a relationship? Or, despite the love lavished on her, does Caroline secretly yearn for broader horizons? Unfolding with the beauty and power of fable, Caroline depicts a glorious Indian summer in one man’s life. It is tender, very funny and endlessly enjoyable.
  • Published: 15 July 2012
  • ISBN: 9780099548683
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 160
  • RRP: $26.99
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About the author

Cornelius Medvei

Cornelius Medvei was born in 1977 and grew up in the east of England. He studied modern languages at Oxford University and worked for a time in China as a teacher. He is the author of the acclaimed novels Mr Thundermug, Caroline and The Partisan. He lives in London.
CM

Also by Cornelius Medvei

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Praise for Caroline

Medvei's prose is limpid and particular, telling the story with an exquisite control that interfuses the sublime and ridiculous in exact proportions, the one hidden inside the other... The result is pleasurable and profound. Medvei never puts a foot wrong

Times Literary Supplement

A complete delight... Ancient myth meets daily grind, and the ordinary and the fantastic... are mingled everywhere you look

Boyd Tonkin, Independent

This absolutely engrossing tale is written with serene poise

Sunday Times

Delightful, unforgettable and splendidly peculiar

Spectator

The most affectionate literary portrait since Bottom was 'translated' in A Midsummer Night's Dream

Michael Arditti, Daily Mail

By the end, as with the French classic The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, the novel emerges as a cautionary tale of such subtlety that its truths - about dependency, love and ownership - are made bearable by the manner of their telling. And by their philosophical charm - which is Medvei's gift

Tom Adair, Scotsman

Medvei's fable about the inexplicable nature of human passion unfolds with a gentle surrealism

Financial Times

It's short and definitely a page-turner - but with lingering thoughtfulness, rather than the rush-through-discard-immediately feel of some fast-paced books… He certainly knows how to craft a novel so that the reader rushes through, loving every moment, curious as to what the next page will hold

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