Lesley McDowell
The Picnic

Title: The Picnic Author: Lesley McDowell Category: Fiction Pub date: August 2007 ISBN: 13 978 1 84502 129 0 Extent: 352 pp. Price: £14.99 Format: Hardback, 234 x 156 mm

This August, enjoy lazy days feasting on The Picnic.

One day in 1973, a woman mysteriously vanishes from a family picnic in Toronto and the multilayered narrative of The Picnic explores the effect this has on her daughter and granddaughter who return home to Scotland without her. Crossing three generations, bridging two continents and spanning over twenty years, The Picnic is an intriguing novel that tackles issues of female identity, exile and belonging and the conflict between sexual desire and family loyalty from an entirely fresh perspective. Lesley McDowell’s lively and rhythmic prose and well-observed characters make this a joy to read. Thoughtful, beautiful, tender and, at times, unsettling, The Picnic hails the arrival of a brilliant new literary talent.

Author information
Lesley McDowell was an academic in the Department of English at the University of St Andrews from 1995–97. Since then, she has worked as a freelance critic, writing for The Times Literary Supplement, The Independent on Sunday, The Sunday Herald and The Scotsman.