Sara Banerji obituary
Novelist whose stories set in Britain and India combined realistic domestic detail with myth and magic Over the course of three decades, Sara Banerji, who has died aged 93, wrote 10 novels combining realistic domestic detail with myth and magic, and sudden violence with a quirky humour. In the first, Cobweb Walking (1986), the child Morgan is able to walk on cobwebs: Sara’s storytelling made the surreal real, bringing a fresh voice to fiction by interweaving fantasy with the absurdities of everyday life. The absence of a father is a theme in several of the novels, her own British army veteran father having died during her teens. In Cobweb Walking, Morgan loses her widowed father to another woman. Fatherless Alice is central in the blackly comic Shining Agnes (1990). In Absolute Hush (1991), the pubescent, unpredictable twins George and Sissy and their beautiful mother live in a grand moated house next to an army camp, their father missing in action, with incest, infidelity and comedy combining in a heady, surprising mix. Continue reading...
Novelist whose stories set in Britain and India combined realistic domestic detail with myth and magic
Over the course of three decades, Sara Banerji, who has died aged 93, wrote 10 novels combining realistic domestic detail with myth and magic, and sudden violence with a quirky humour. In the first, Cobweb Walking (1986), the child Morgan is able to walk on cobwebs: Sara’s storytelling made the surreal real, bringing a fresh voice to fiction by interweaving fantasy with the absurdities of everyday life.
The absence of a father is a theme in several of the novels, her own British army veteran father having died during her teens. In Cobweb Walking, Morgan loses her widowed father to another woman. Fatherless Alice is central in the blackly comic Shining Agnes (1990). In Absolute Hush (1991), the pubescent, unpredictable twins George and Sissy and their beautiful mother live in a grand moated house next to an army camp, their father missing in action, with incest, infidelity and comedy combining in a heady, surprising mix.
Continue reading...