Seaside Towns

For Anatoliy Yetvushenko, émigré and physicist, it should be the perfect holiday. Llandudno calls to his mind the Black Sea holidays of his childhood in Ukraine, while his companion, Francis, is just beginning to awaken to the possibilities of male sexual love in the first years following its legalisation. But Anatoliy has memories of an earlier holiday in Lyme Regis in the 1950s, where his previous lover, Philip, who now lives near Llandudno, left him to make a loveless marriage. With its awareness of the landscape of the north coast of Wales, of quantum physics and of deep time, this novel reflects the search for intimacy and fulfilment in the shadow of political tyranny and sexual persecution.

‘gentle yet searing, introspective yet intensely physical. A real gem of a book… Seek it out if you can.’

Rachel Rees, Buzz

‘the wonder, the intensity, the profound gratitude of [sexual love]… the intimately human [cast] in an epic light, in the awesome interconnectedness of all’

Niall Griffiths, Nation.Cymru

About the Author

A. L. Reynolds lives in the beautiful Conwy Valley, North Wales, where the surroundings add more than a little inspiration to her writing. After a misspent youth pursuing literature and mediaeval studies to postgraduate level, she now divides her time between her children, her cats, and her computer.

Her first novel, How Glass Becomes Sand, was published (as A. L. Doughty) while she was still at university. Since then she has published two other works of literary fiction with Cockatrice Books: Of the Ninth Verse, a portrait of illicit love in Dyffryn Conwy, and Seaside Towns, a novel exploring the weight of personal and cultural history against the backdrop of a Welsh resort. She is a contributor, alongside Carys Bray, Gee Williams, Glenda Beagan and others, to Dangerous Asylums, an anthology of fiction published by the North Wales Mental Health Research Project.

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Paperback Ebook


Paperback: ISBN: 978-1912368358 | Format: 12.7×20.3cm / 5×8” | Length: 190 pages | Price: £8.99.
Ebook: ISBN: 978-1912368495 | Format: DRM-free epub | File size: 622KB | Price: £1.99.

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