Nanda Gray, the daughter of a Catholic convert, is nine when she is sent to the Convent of Five Wounds. Quick-witted, resilient and eager to please, she accepts this closed world where, with all the enthusiasm of the outsider, her desires and passions become only those the school permits. Her only deviation from total obedience is the passionate friendships she makes.

Convent life is perfectly captured - the smell of beeswax and incense; the petty cruelties of the nuns; the eccentricities of Nanda's school friends.

*'Frost in May is the unsurpassed novel of convent school life' Hermione Lee, Observer

About the Author
Antonia White (1899-1980) was educated at the Convent of the Sacred Heart at Roehampton before going to St Paul's School for Girls and training for the stage at RADA. From 1924 until the Second World War she worked as a journalist. Among numerous volumes of short stories, fiction and autobiography, Antonia White published a celebrated quartet of novels linked by their heroine: Frost in May (1922), The Lost Traveller (1950), The Sugar House (1952) and Beyond the Glass (1954).

Reviews
Frost in May is the unsurpassed novel of convent school life. This story of a clash between a determined young girl and an authoritarian regime is both perceptive and painfully emotional, convincing in every detail -- Hermione Lee * Observer *
Evelyn Waugh called [her] one of the very best novelists of the day - a title she still deserves -- Carol Shields
Intense, troubling, semi-miraculous ... IT is not the only school story to be a classic; but I can think of no other that is a work of art * Elizabeth Bowen *
A masterpiece. Beautifully written, it is a calm and factual record of the slow death of the soul -- Selina Hastings
A small masterpiece, the compelling and passionate story of young girls at a repressive religious school, told with such lyricism and elegant economy, such subtle understanding -- Tessa Hadley



Book Information
ISBN 9781844083787
Author Antonia White
Format Paperback
Page Count 224
Imprint Virago Press Ltd
Publisher Little, Brown Book Group
Weight(grams) 164g
Dimensions(mm) 197mm * 129mm * 15mm