Pillars of Gold

Alice Thomas Ellis

Viking, 1992 - Fiction - 181 pages

Despite their extravagant social consciences and their delight in domestic drama, none of Barb's neighbors tries to find her when she vanishes. Scarlet is busy (neurotically busy, she thinks) keeping the peace between second husband Brian and adolescent daughter, Camille. Over the fence next door, Scarlet's best friend, Constance, is busy trying to ditch Memet, he of the unexplained absences and dinner-time charm. Meanwhile, a bloodstained body has been dragged from the canal. Mysteriously, no one is ready to go to the police...

About the author

Alice Thomas Ellis (also writes as Anna Margaret Haycraft), is a novelist and columnist. She was born in Liverpool, England in 1932. She attended Bangor Grammar School and the Liverpool School of Art. Ellis wrote a weekly column for the Spectator from 1985 to 1989 and for the Catholic Herald from 1990 to 1996. She co-wrote two books on juvenile delinquency with psychiatrist Tom Pitt-Atkins. Ellis also wrote A Welsh Childhood, a book recounting the history of Wales and featuring the photographs of Patrick Sutherland. Ellis has written several novels beginning with The Sin Eater in 1977. The novel won the Welsh Arts Council Award. Other novels include Unexplained Laughter which won the Yorkshire Post Novel of the Year in 1985 and The Inn at the End of the World which was the winner of the Writer's Guild Award for Best Fiction in 1991. Another novel, The 27th Kingdom, received a Booker Prize Nomination in 1982. She was also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature from 1999 until her death in 2005, due to lung cancer.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Pillars of Gold
• Author: Alice Thomas Ellis
• Publisher: Viking, 1992
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: Mar 7, 2008
• ISBN: 0670832758, 9780670832750
• Length: 181 pages
• Subjects: Fiction / City Life; Fiction / General; Fiction / Literary; Fiction / Psychological