Fiction
Category: Fiction, Literary Fiction
Number of pages: 260
ISBN: 9781854114358
Publication date: October 12, 2007
Price: £7.99
Shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize
‘It’s language quicksilvering a howl of anguish…on the strength of this book alone, Minhinnick stakes his claim to be regarded as the finest writer working in any genre in Wales today.’ – Jim Perrin, on To Babel and Back
‘The leading Welsh poet of his generation’ – Sean O’Brien, Sunday Times
A stunning debut novel from this award-winning poet and essayist, Sea Holly is a story of drifting, burnt-out lives, shadowed by the mysterious disappearance of a vivacious young girl. Sea Holly tells the story of John Vine, a hard working English teacher who has left job and family and moved to a nearby coastal caravan park, calling bingo numbers for a living.
“John Vine? He has it all. Home, family, career. You can’t knock that. But he has this worm inside him, this dissatisfaction… A boy of twenty, that’s OK, he’s going to dream. But a man of fifty? With a young piece who thinks he’s not half bad?…believe me that’s when everything’s going to come loose.That’s when it’s going to get dangerous.”
Robert Minhinnick
Robert Minhinnick is one of Wales’ (some would say Britain’s) most eminent writers. He is a multi-prizewinning poet, essayist and novelist; his most recent poetry collection was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize in 2017 and won Wales Book of the Year, which he has won three times. Two of his novels have been shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize. He edited Poetry Wales for ten years. Minhinnick is also an environmentalist and founder of Friends of the Earth Cymru and Sustainable Wales who has written extensively on the environment.
His debut novel Sea Holly (2007) was shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize in 2008. Robert’s second novel Limestone Man (2015) is a gripping story of a man who tries to connect past and present yet is haunted by dreams of Australia and his youth. His novel Nia was longlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize 2019
He edited Gorwelion: Shared Horizons (2021) a book of essays about climate change. His latest non-fiction book Delirium was published by Seren (2021).
