AWAKENING

This is a highly intelligent and articulate novel – a kind of Victorian Sense & Sensibility – about the nature of faith and personal belief, by a writer at the height of her powers.

AWAKENING is set in the mid-late 19th century, in Wiltshire, England, against the backdrop of religious dissent. Beatrice and Anna Pentecost are sisters in their twenties who find themselves alone in the world, living together in the family home left to them by their father, a Baptist minister.

Their relationship is complicated. Anna, the fiery younger sister, is the more openly rebellious of the two: rebelling against the Baptist community in which she lives and the ‘rules’ of their male-orientated society. As such, she is diagnosed as a ‘hysteric’ by the community’s doctor – and suffers the disapproval of her elder sister. However, Beatrice herself is not without her own doubts, both personal and religious, which, unlike Anna, she keeps bottled up inside her, at least to begin with.
As the question of marriage intrudes upon their lives, Beatrice and Anna find themselves having to reevaluate their religious and personal beliefs with unexpected consequences.

Stevie Davies was born in Wales and is a novelist, literary critic, biographer and historian. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a Fellow of the Academi Gymreig and is Director of Creative Writing at the University of Wales, Swansea. She is the author of numerous works of fiction and non-fiction, including The Element of Water, which was longlisted for both the Booker (2001) and Orange (2002) Prizes, and won the 2002 Arts Council of Wales Award. Kith and Kin was longlisted for the Orange Prize in 2004.