The Whole Wide Beauty - Couverture souple

Katherine Freeman has drifted far from her life as a dancer. Married with a small child and working as a part-time teacher, she has become distant from her life, navigating the world in a dream, drawn one way and another by those who depend on her.

Her father David is the charismatic director of the Broughton Poetry Foundation in Northumberland. His intense passion for his work masks a complicated inner world, and his already fraught relationship with Katherine is further threatened when she falls in love with his young colleague, Stephen Jericho. Stephen and Katherine risk everything as they explore the extremes of their passionate connection.

In this powerful debut, Emily Woof uses her unique descriptive talent and spare prose to examine the human need to engage. This is an exceptional novel about life's choices: love and family, art and commerce, ideals and compromise.

Emily Woof was born in Newcastle. For theatre and radio her plays include 'Sex III', 'Revolver', 'Pianoman', 'Baby Love' and 'Home to the Black Sea'. She has written and directed two short films, 'Between the Wars' and 'Meeting Helen'. She trained as a trapeze artist, and as an actor her screen credits include 'The Full Monty', 'The Woodlanders' and 'Velvet Goldmine'. She lives in London with her husband and two children. 'The Whole Wide Beauty' is her first novel.