Shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize 2008
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.
"Minhinnick has brought his poet's eye to the landscape and a realism to
the lives of his characters. It is an unsettling read, but I'm glad I
made the effort."
Rodney Troubridge, Waterstone's Fiction Marketing Planner
"Minhinnick evokes a place in which detritus and squalor go hand in hand
with the untameable wildness and beauty of nature... Minhinnick has
crafted a powerful and uneasy novel whose central protagonist, with his
failure to make 'his life fit the shape it needed to fit', is a
painfully convincing example of the inner conflict that plays at the
heart of so much of human experience."
New Welsh Review
"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
"The man is a consistent winner... Robert Minhinnick has been regarded
as the best writer in Wales now for more than a decade and his voice
needs to be heard internationally."
Western Mail
Robert Minhinnick has an international reputation as a poet and
essayist. An environmental campaigner, he has travelled to, and written
about many parts of the world and is recognised as one of Wales'
foremost poets. His first poetry collection was published more than
twenty-five years ago. He has won the Forward Poetry Prize twice and his
last book, To Babel and Back - a series of essays from America, Iraq
and his native Wales, was the Welsh Book of the Year 2006.
