Eating Air

English
By: Pauline Melville
Hardcover
407pp
Telegram, 2009
14 x 22 cm
9781846590764
Literature-Novel

Ella de Vries, a stunning obsedian-eyed beauty who dance with the Royal Ballet, falls in love with Donny McLeod, a Dionysiac rebel and free spirit who "believes in nothing". It is the 1970s. They move into a household of political radicals and become casually drawn into extremism. Special Branch infiltration leads to a violent crime that sends Ella into self-imposed exile in Brazil. Donny goes wandering. Over thirty years later Ella returns. The economy is in freefall. A new kind of terrorist is active. The unruly nature of love reunites her with a former housemate torn over whether to make common cause with Islamic extremists in attacking a bank, the final outcome is as shocking as it is unexpected. Comic and frightning, satirical and poetic.