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26a - Diana Evans
Published by Review
ISBN 0-7553-0750-X
Price £7.99
Identical twins, Georgia and Bessi Hunter, live in the loft of 26 Waifer Avenue. It's a place of beanbags,
nectarines and secrets, and visitors must always knock before entering.
Down below there is not such harmony. Their Nigerian mother puts cayenne pepper on her Yorkshire pudding
and has mysterious ways of dealing with homesickness; their father angrily roams the streets of Neasden,
prey to the demons of his Derbyshire upbringing.
Forced to create their own identities, the Hunter children build a separate universe. Older sister Bel
discovers sex, high heels and organic hairdressing, the twins prepare for a flapjack empire, while baby
sister Kemy learns to moonwalk for Michael Jackson. It is when the reality comes knocking that the fantasies
of childhood start to give way.
How will Georgia and Bessi cope in a world of separateness and solitude, and which of them will be stronger?
Wickedly funny and devastatingly moving, 26a is an extraordinary first novel. Part fairytale, part nightmare,
it moves from the mundane to the magical, the particular to the universal with exceptional flair and imagination.
It is for anyone who has had a childhood, and anyone who knows what it is to lose one.
Diana Evans is a graduate of the University of East Anglia's Creative Writing MA and has published short fiction
in a number of anthologies. She has worked as a journalist and arts critic for Marie Claire, the Evening Standard,
The Source and Pride magazine, and writes regularly for the Independent and the Stage. She lives in West London.
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