Marvella Payne is twenty-seven, works as a secretary for British Rail
and has pledged to the congregation of the Church of the Holy Spirit
that she will abstain from sex before marriage. When she repulses the
groping hands of the trainee-deacon, Carlton Springle, she resigns
herself to growing old with her mother, father and Bible-soaked aunts.
But Aunt Julie has other ideas and finds Marvella a penfriend from her
native Guyana. When good fortune allows the couple to meet, Marvella
awakens to new possibilities as she realises how bound she has been by
the voices of her dependent, cossetted childhood. But will marriage be
another entrapment, another loss of self?
"Gather the Faces has a happy ending and is written with Gilroy's
characteristic clarity of description and fluency of language. Its
optimism shimmers, its spirituality glows in the beautiful verses quoted
from the Biblical Song of Songs, and the reader is revivified as faith
in love is restored."
Phyllis Briggs-Emmanuel, The Caribbean Writer
Beryl Gilroy came to London over fifty years ago from Guyana. She
wrote six novels, two autobiographical books and was a pioneering
teacher and psychotherapist. Sadly, she died in 2000 at the age of 76.
