The Edge of Pleasure

· A&C Black
Ebook
325
Pages
Ratings and reviews aren’t verified  Learn More

About this ebook

Gilver Memmer, a successful and handsome artist, was always lucky. His artistic skills were spotted at an early age and his good looks made him popular with the girls. He studied at Oxford where he was admired by teachers and students alike, and by the age of twenty-eight he was rich, famous and could have any woman he wanted. His life was all glamour and extravagant parties, and even his exhibition flop in New York could not shake Gilver's confidence.

Having been fortunate and popular all his life Gilvert rarely paid attention to his financial affairs – a decade later, much to his great surprise, he finds himself out of money with nowhere live. 'On his forty-second birthday, Gilver Memmer woke up and realised he had slept for over ten years.' He does not know the name of the girl in his bed, he is broke and not many people remember that he used to be a celebrated painter. He is ready to change his life and redeem mistakes of his youth, but will this egocentric artist and dissolute womaniser be able to change? Will his friends stick around when he has no money and his fame is forgotten? Will he find a love that will conquer his promiscuous habits?

The Edge of Pleasure is Phillipa Stockley's debut novel and was first published in 2002. Stockley, a Londoner and painter herself, sets her intriguing change-of-fortune and change-of-life plot in the capital over the eighties and nineties.

Reminiscent of a young Beryl Bainbridge or Muriel Spark, The Edge of Pleasure is a stylish first novel from a wonderful writing talent.

About the author

Having had her first novel rejected by Faber when she was eight, Philippa Stockley worked variously and often simultaneously as a painter; a clothing-, set-, costume-, interior- and graphic-designer; a window-painter; journalist; newspaper-page-designer; editor, columnist and reviewer, before publishing her first London-set novel, The Edge of Pleasure.

She studied English at Oxford, then clothing history at the Courtauld Institute where she wrote a thesis upon costume in the novels of Fielding and Defoe, giving her an introduction to the background of her second novel, The Factory of Cunning.

Philippa Stockley has reviewed for The Sunday Telegraph and Country Life, and written for The Evening Standard, RA magazine, and Cornerstone.

Rate this ebook

Tell us what you think.

Reading information

Smartphones and tablets
Install the Google Play Books app for Android and iPad/iPhone. It syncs automatically with your account and allows you to read online or offline wherever you are.
Laptops and computers
You can listen to audiobooks purchased on Google Play using your computer's web browser.
eReaders and other devices
To read on e-ink devices like Kobo eReaders, you'll need to download a file and transfer it to your device. Follow the detailed Help Center instructions to transfer the files to supported eReaders.