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THE BOOKER PRIZE-WINNING NOVEL

2019 marked the centenary of Stanley Middleton’s birth. Holiday, winner of the 1974 Booker Prize, remains the most celebrated and popular novel from ‘the Chekhov of suburbia’.

Edwin Fisher has fled to a seaside resort of his childhood past to try to come to terms with the death of his baby son and the collapse of his marriage to Meg. On this strange and lonely holiday, as he seeks to understand what went wrong, Edwin must find somea way to think about what he has been and decide upon where he can go next.
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‘At first glance, or even at second, Stanley Middleton’s world is easily recognizable… The excellence of art, for Middleton, is an exact vision of real things as they are. And because he is himself so exact an observer, his world at third glance can seem strange and disturbing or newly and brilliantly lit with colour.’ A.S. Byatt

‘We need Stanley Middleton to remind us what the novel is about. Holiday is vintage Middleton… One has to look at nineteenth-century writing for comparable storytelling.’ Sunday Times

Publisher Review

We need Stanley Middleton to remind us what the novel is about. Holiday is vintage Middleton. The result of Mr Middleton's analysis is so satisfying that one has to look at nineteenth-century writing for comparable storytelling. -- Ronald Blythe * Sunday Times * At first glance, or even at second, Stanley Middleton's world is easily recognizable... The excellence of art, for Middleton, is an exact vision of real things as they are. And because he is himself so exact an observer, his world at third glance can seem strange and disturbing or newly and brilliantly lit with colour -- A.S. Byatt Middleton is a born writer; unpretentious, discerning, intelligent... He is the Chekhov of suburbia. -- James Runcie * Daily Telegraph * Middleton is concerned with what goes on below the surface of lives, what people feel, dream about, hope for, resent, fear - all the things that in real life may be kept hidden... Anyone coming to Middleton afresh has a real treat in store. -- Allan Massie * Scotsman * Genuinely affecting * The Times *