The Feast

Summer, 1947. A bizarre catastrophe rocks a seaside village in Cornwall when a cliff tumbles down on the Pendizack Manor Hotel. The hotel is obliterated, and seven guests are killed in the disaster. Everyone else makes a narrow escape. As the survivors tell their stories, the events of the previous week are revealed, and a parade of sins exposed. Gluttony, Lecherousness, Sloth, Pride, Covetousness, Envy and Wrath: all are in residence at Pendizack Manor, and as the day of the disaster creeps closer, it becomes clear that who’s spared and who’s lost might not be as arbitrary as first assumed.

A modern upstairs-downstairs comedy with an old-fashioned morality play tucked away inside, The Feast is sly, kaleidoscopic, and utterly ingenious, a novel that only Margaret Kennedy could have written.

“Hilarious and perceptive, here’s the perfect seaside holiday read. We’re in Cornwall in 1947, where a landslide has buried a hotel, fatally crushing guests in the rubble . . . Events leading up to the disaster are entertainingly revealed through the diaries, letters, thoughts, and conversations of the inmates of the hotel. And what an intriguing bunch they are: obnoxious children, an arty writer and her toy boy, nutty priest . . . snobs, slobs, and the lovelorn. The nail-biting tension to discover who actually survived the tragedy will keep you on the very edge of your deckchair.” 

—Val Hennessy, Daily Mail

“Love The White Lotus? . . . Your thirst for acerbic social satire about the insufferable rich—something with a soupçon of vengeance, generational conflict, depravity and death, all in an escapist holiday setting—remains unquenched . . . How about filling that void with a book? [In] the preface to Margaret Kennedy’s sharply observed novel – originally published in 1950 . . . we learn that a cliff has collapsed on the family-run Pendizack Manor Hotel in postwar Cornwall, England, entombing guests and owner alike under a heap of giant boulders. (All are presumed dead, and no efforts made to rescue them.) A deep sense of foreboding thus hangs over the playful, witty story that ensues, involving the friendships and romances of seven characters—each subtly based on one of the seven deadly sins—at the hotel shortly before disaster struck.”

—Emily Donaldson, The Globe and Mail

“Exquisite comedy . . . Tense, touching, human, dire, and funny, The Feast is a feast indeed.” —Elizabeth Bowen

“Her most impressive novel, the one in which she has the most to say and has, fortunately, found her best way to say it . . . Since Kennedy makes you love, loathe, or just feel sorry for her people, the last fifty pages of The Feast pack more suspense than most current Hollywood thrillers.”

—Leo Lerman, New York Times Book Review

“So full of pleasure that you could be forgiven for not seeing how clever it is.” 

—Cathy Rentzenbrink

“The Feast is aptly named . . . It has Kennedy’s narrative skill, her distinction, her grace, above all, her peculiar magic.”

—Elizabeth Jenkins, Guardian

“Delightfully told . . . A comedy of (generally ill) manners. Fortunately Kennedy has the knack of investing even her ‘deadliest’ characters with an interest which in real life could hardly have been theirs. And, as usual, her children are a joy.” 

—Ralph Straus, Sunday Times

“Entertaining, beautifully written, and profound.”

—Tracy Chevalier

“It's all quite funny . . . Some of the characters may seem too outrageous to be true, but practically all the excess is believable, and the children . . . are exceptionally well-drawn. The Feast is a good piece of entertainment, and a satisfying read.”

—Michael Orthofer, Complete Review

“Here again is a sort of madness, at which [Kennedy] is adept . . . A haunting sort of story.”

—Kirkus

Margaret Kennedy (1896–1967) found popular acclaim before the age of thirty with her 1924 novel The Constant Nymph. It sold copies in the millions and spawned no fewer than three screen adaptations. One of the most successful and prolific British novelists of the twentieth century, she also produced literary criticism, plays, screenplays, and a biography of Jane Austen.

The Feast • Paperback ISBN: 9781946022509

Jun 6, 2023 • McNALLY EDITIONS no. 18

5" x 8.5" • 336 pages • $18.00

eBook ISBN: 9781946022516