Going East (Paperback, New Ed)

Snappy, if occasionally slow-paced, debut in which the moneyed ease of a young woman's life is shattered when her entire family is killed on an evening. Mia Taylor's family-her 20-year-old twin sisters, Caitlin and Lara; her turning-30 younger brother Ben-gather at her parents' home for a birthday celebration. By the end, they are all dead (Lara will die the next morning) thanks to a bomb that went off, presumably meant for a neighbor with a murky relation to the troubles in Ireland. Unable to face the unrelenting sympathy of well-wishers and friends, Mia leaves her well-paying, influential government job and "goes East," where she finds work managing an alternative medicine clinic. Rubbing shoulders with street stragglers, immigrants, and a host of local eccentrics, Mia is tracked down in her new life by Claude, a friend of her brother Ben's, who tells her the truth behind her family's death. Ben, who was involved in a high-level, multinational money-laundering scheme, had been "skimming off the top" from his shady clients and had paid the price for his hubris. Though Claude insists she leave the past alone, Mia can't help but begin a search for her family's killers, an inquiry that will lead her to one of London's leading Muslim clerics by way of her former employer, Miles Anderton, a comer in English politics. D'Ancona, deputy editor of the Sunday Telegraph, has a sure grasp of the rich cultural, class, and ethnic tapestry that makes up Mia's contemporary London, and this sense of place is one of the story's signal strengths as Mia loses her illusions, confronts hard truths, and is finally able to make a bitter peace with her past. A lively and compelling portrait of the city, while Mia, vividly drawn and engaging, meanders a half-step too slowly toward a conclusion that's itself fresh and satisfying. (Kirkus Reviews)

London can be as pitiless as it is bountiful. No one knows that better than Mia Taylor. From a gilded life of privilege to a shabby alternative health centre in London's East End in the space of weeks. The violent tragedy that propels Mia east also pitches her unwittingly into a bigger history, a modern legend of migration and change. Mia's new life brings her into contact both with a kaleidoscope of characters who inhabit the extraordinary city of London and the burning issues that will mould its future. Politics and racism, corruption and betrayal, poverty and decadence, all smoulder side by side as the capital blazes into the new millennium. Out of the ashes emerges Mia: a troubled, questing woman who hopes to find herself by going east.

General

Imprint:	Sceptre
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Release date:	April 2004
Authors:	Matthew D'Ancona
Dimensions:	196 x 127 x 26mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback - B-format
Pages:	416
Edition:	New Ed
ISBN-13:	978-0-340-82847-2
Categories:	Books > Fiction > General & literary fiction > Modern fiction
LSN:	0-340-82847-1
Barcode:	9780340828472

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