The rocks / Peter Nichols.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

"Irresistibly sunny...  Set in the brightly lit Mediterranean amid old olive trees and sexual intrigue, music and wine and beautiful women... Propulsive." - The New York Times Book Review

"The perfect book for pretending it's already beach season." - O, The Oprah Magazine

A romantic page-turner propelled by the sixty-year secret that has shaped two families, four lovers, and one seaside resort community.

Set against dramatic Mediterranean Sea views and lush olive groves, The Rocks opens with a confrontation and a secret: What was the mysterious, catastrophic event that drove two honeymooners apart so suddenly and absolutely in 1948 that they never spoke again despite living on the same island for sixty more years? And how did their history shape the Romeo and Juliet-like romance of their (unrelated) children decades later? Centered around a popular seaside resort club and its community, The Rocks is a double love story that begins with a mystery, then moves backward in time, era by era, to unravel what really happened decades earlier.

Peter Nichols writes with a pervading, soulful wisdom and self-knowing humor, and captures perfectly this world of glamorous, complicated, misbehaving types with all their sophisticated flaws and genuine longing. The result is a bittersweet, intelligent, and romantic novel about how powerful the perceived truth can be--as a bond, and as a barrier--even if it's not really the whole story; and how one misunderstanding can echo irreparably through decades.

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected proof*** Copyright © 2015 Peter Nichols Luc couldn't read. He couldn't possibly sleep. He got out of his bunk and left his cabin barefoot. On deck, the yacht was moving slowly but steadily. The sea surface was still flat but now stippled with breeze. The wind was southerly and warm--from Morocco maybe. Luc walked forward, on the windward side of the taut staysail, the deck beneath him so stable that he didn't need to hold on to anything. He stopped at the very apex of the bow beside the long bowsprit that projected twelve feet over the water forward of the hull. It was an exposed position: the wire handrail that ran along the edge of the deck stopped six feet behind him for ease of sail handling at this concentrated spot; for security he held onto the staysail's wire forestay that rose from the deck to the mast crosstrees. This was his favorite place on the boat. Here, on a small triangle of teak planking, the water below rushing past him on both sides, he seemed to be flying at bird height and speed over the sea. He was almost off the boat; Szabó and all his crappy ideas and his rude wife and sister-in-law were all behind him, in another world, encapsulated in their solipsistic bickering and holidaymaking, while he rode ahead of them, in the clear breeze, as detached as a ship's figurehead. Against the many small noises made by a yacht at sea--the tumbling, hissing, or burbling of water; the high- or low-pitched whistle or moan of the wind through the almost countless ropes and wires that make up the complicated architecture of a sailing rig; the creak, stretch, hum of the warp and weft of so much mechanical gear; waves of vibration at the upper and lower range of human aural sensitivity, all of which becomes the quotidian ambient voice of the world afloat, in a very short time ignored and unheard by those used to it--against that, Luc now heard something else. It was rhythmic, irregular, escalating, not boat or sea--human . . . grunting. Luc leaned forward and craned his head around the forestay and saw, in the dim shadowless shade beneath the staysail, the message GO HIKE THE CANYON swaying astride a pair of long, pale, twitching legs-- Luc recoiled. Twisting awkwardly in an effort at noiseless retreat, his toe caught beneath the bowsprit. He exhaled sharply through a wide-open mouth to make no sound, his knee buckling and he squatted, spatial orientation thrown for a second, falling back until he knew they'd hear him when he hit the rail or the deck, but he hit nothing. He dropped with great surprise through the air into the gently curling bow wave. His mouth, still open, filled with water--warm, salty. He exhaled sharply, coughing, clamping his lips closed against inhalation. He tumbled underwater, still disoriented, kicking, hands out. He couldn't tell which way was up. Eyes open, he saw dim phosphorescence. He bumped against something hard, the hull. His hands found it, slick and moving fast. He pushed away, afraid of the propeller, then remembered about the engine. He came up, sucked air, and was pulled down again. Now he knew where the surface and the boat were. He clawed up, and away from the boat, so the propeller, even if it wasn't moving, wouldn't catch him, hold him down, or hit him in the head. But he had to shout and let them know. He came up again. He was still forward of Dolphin's stern. "Help!" he spluttered. It wasn't loud enough. He sucked in air, getting water too, gagged, coughed. "Help!" he tried again. The boat kept going, not fast it seemed, but the stern was passing him now. It was a perfect movie shot. The POV of someone in the water with a sailboat sliding past and leaving him behind. " Help! Stop! I've fallen overboard! Hellllp !" Now the yacht was past, moving away. Dolphin looked beautiful, heeled slightly, the sails filled out into pale parabolas--finally it looked like its brochure. No one coming to the stern rail though. The lights on in the aft cabin, where Szabó was right now. He couldn't see if the windows were open. " Help! Gáborr! He-e-e-lllp!" It sounded loud enough. " Hell --" A small wave from the wake slopped into his face and filled his mouth. He shouted some more. Nobody came to the rail. Kicking hard, he tried to get his head up and cupped his hands around his mouth and screamed. "He-e-e-e-e-lllllllllllllllllllllllllllll--" He went under. Flailing, he rose above the surface again. Heart beating, gasping for air, Luc turned all his attention to staying afloat and catching his breath. For a moment he could no longer see the yacht. Then he found it. By sleight of perspective--Luc's eyes were at literal sea level, the horizon only ten or twenty feet distant-- Dolphin was disappearing fast, already hull down from his fish-eye POV, the rig slipping below the waves. In less than a minute it was impossibly far away, diminished in perspective, its lights fading. " H-e-e-e-e-e-e-lllllllllllllllllllp !" Gone. Luc dog-paddled, revolving slowly, to see what else might be around him. Only the foreshortened circle of small waves. No lights, but in one direction, the north he thought, the loom of Mallorca far away in the sky. Part of him was stunned, unable to think or imagine, refusing to grasp what had just happened. In another part of himself, an inner voice said clearly: "You're dead, pal." Luc had spent half his life in the water, around boats and swimming off rocks along the shore. He'd done a lot of snorkeling--he could hold his breath for maybe two minutes--he was completely at home and relaxed in the water. But he'd never been much of a swimmer. Swimming was the way you got from boat to shore or water-ski to the rocks, a couple of hundred yards. He could always manage that. He'd never tried for more. He was about eight or ten miles south of the east end of Mallorca. There were no rocks or islands to head for. Unless someone on board Dolphin missed him pretty soon and they came back and found him--but even then, Luc knew, there was only one way that could work. The way it had happened with the Clutterbucks, Malcolm and Pansy, friends of his mother's, and their fifteen-year-old daughter, Cobina, sailing their yacht Vagabond years ago off the southern coast of Spain toward Gibraltar in a levante gale at night. Pansy had just come up into the cockpit, clutching two mugs of hot chocolate, prepared below with epic difficulty on a single paraffin burner, for herself and Malcolm. As she stepped aft toward Malcolm at the wheel, the boat lurched on a wave and Pansy, more mindful, she said later, of the hot tearing along under a press of sail, was instantly past her. There was nothing to be seen of Pansy in the frothing wake astern. "Well, darling, if you'd been Malcolm, sitting there at the wheel waiting for your hot chockies, and suddenly there it goes, me with it, shot into the dark like one of those people out of a cannon at the circus, instantly buried in enormous waves, what would you have done?" Pansy liked to ask. "Well, thank God, he did the only sensible thing. He sat there for several minutes thinking it all through. Didn't move a spoke of the wheel, let go a sheet, or in any way check the yacht's progress. Off he went over the horizon, thinking jolly hard, with me already a quarter of a mile astern. Eventually he rang the bell we had there in the cockpit to wake Cobina. As you know, it can be difficult to wake a teenager, no matter where she is. Malcolm rang and rang the bell, and eventually Cobina appeared at the hatch. 'Mum's gone overboard, a little way back,' he said to her. 'Go below and pull on your oilskins, and come back up here and take the helm.' Off she goes. Back up into the cockpit a few minutes later. Boat's still cracking along on course. 'Take the helm and keep her on this exact course, not a degree off,' Malcolm told her. Cobina took the wheel and Malcolm then went below. Down at the chart table, he works it all out: the yacht's course made good, allowing for set and drift made by the wind, current, what have you. Then my course made good, allowing for same, from the spot where I fell in, plotting both positions at a point another four minutes into the future--at that point a good fifteen minutes since I'd gone overboard. Where the yacht would be then, where I would be. Jolly clever. Then Malcolm draws a course from the yacht at that point to me at that point, adjusting again for wind, current, leeway made on the return course, and pencils it off on the compass rose. Comes back into the cockpit, takes the wheel from Cobina--who's completely nonplussed, darling, because she's still half asleep--and continues counting to himself until the four minutes have elapsed. Then he brings the yacht about--a jibe in that wind--and begins beating back, directly into the wind, along the new course he's just worked out. "Well, I was perfectly calm and content. I knew that was it. There was nothing to be done. Not a chance--not the slightest chance, darling--of being found and rescued in a gale, at sea, at night. I accepted it completely. I thought it a pity, but there it was. I thought about all sorts of things: growing up, summers in Cornwall, my old boarding school Benenden even--I can't imagine why--that I loved, what an absolutely marvelous life Malcolm and I had had, what a glory Cobina had become, what a fabulous woman she would be. That sort of thing. I wasn't in a hurry to end it. I wasn't trying to swim anywhere. I was just going up and down on the waves, having fun thinking about it all. And I decided that's what I would do: just go up and down and think about how marvelous everything had been, until I sort of fell asleep, or whatever it is that happens to one. I might as well have been plummeting to earth out of an airplane without a parachute for all that I had the remotest thought of coming out of it somehow. Tremendously peaceful. "Well, about, I don't know, twenty minutes later, I saw a light. I thought, hallo, what's that? It didn't occur me that it could possibly be Vagabond . I didn't know what it was, how far off, nothing. A fishing boat or a ferry miles away was my first thought. Then I saw it going up and down, pitching with the sea and I realized it was Vagabond , and they were getting close. At that moment, I can tell you, I became scared to death--what if they didn't find me? I now thought. I almost wished they'd go away! Then, in moments, the yacht was alongside, and Malcolm was on deck shining a ruddy great torch into my face, saying, "Ah, there you are," as if I were a missing sock. Well, he got me aboard, and I went below and made some more hot chocolate." That wasn't going to happen here. Dolphin had no Malcolm Clutterbuck, no one had seen Luc go overboard to mark a position and do all that clever navigation so they could go back and find him. No one had heard him go--the care he'd taken so Mireille and her lover wouldn't hear anything. Luc tried to remember what he had seen. Just her GO HIKE THE CANYON T-shirt on top of the white legs beneath her. Could have been Dominick, the presumptive ever-ready lech. But he'd been too absorbed by and quite far along with Sarah's broiled poitrine to squander his energies elsewhere. Dominick had some unerring instinct that enabled him to detect and tumble the unlikeliest quarries. Luc had noticed his solicitous attention to Sarah in the aftermath of the engine failure. Undoubtedly, he'd soon find a cabin, if he hadn't already, where he could look after her properly until repairs had been effected. Not Tim or Ian or Roger. Mireille had been as determinedly unaware of their existence as she'd been of Luc's. Fergus, then. Luc should have spotted that the moment he came aboard at noon and saw that Fergus, wittingly or otherwise, had ignited unsuspected responses to wit and male company in Mireille's neurasthenic personality-- Cheating on Aegina, the fucker. Luc had always known Fergus wasn't worthy of her. He felt vindicated, and angry. And now he couldn't tell her. Well, he wouldn't have told her; she'd figure it out for herself if she hadn't already. She'd get rid of Fergus someday. He'd always believed that. But by then--well, by tomorrow morning probably--he, Luc, would be dead. No getting back together, then. He'd always wondered if she'd thought of that as much as he had. Not that he'd wanted to necessarily, but there had always been Aegina first and then everyone else. He compared all women to Aegina and he'd never been able to get past her or leave her behind. She had imprinted herself on him like a tattoo. Had she really left him behind? Embraced Fergus as the future? How funny to think that she now would live a long time without him; in ten, twenty, thirty years she would remember (hopefully) the last time she'd seen him: on his motorcycle outside the tabacos . Thirty-three years old. What would she remember--the good stuff or the bad? He'd always thought there was more to come between them. The water wasn't so warm now. Vertical, Luc swept his hands before him in a faint breaststroke, his feet moving slowly beneath him, not going anywhere--pointless swimming--but treading water to stay afloat. That's all he'd ever done. He felt he hadn't started his life yet. He hadn't become successful, or made any money, or fallen in love with someone--else. It was always going to happen after he'd finished whatever he was doing and did the next thing. It was the next thing that was going to work. He paddled in a circle, just looking around casually as you would anywhere you found yourself stuck for a while. How do you drown? Do you get so tired that you just can't stay up? Since he wasn't swimming, he wasn't exhausted, yet. He was sure he could float like this for another ten or twenty minutes, maybe longer . . . he had no idea. Maybe he could float until daylight and then some yacht would see him. It was always possible. Conserve heat and energy--or should he expend energy, swim a little, to stay warm? That would burn calories, and soon he'd run out of whatever energy he still had. It didn't matter. Nobody was going to find him. This was it. You're dead, pal. Excerpted from The Rocks by Peter Nichols All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Nichols's (Voyage to the North Star) tale begins in 2005, at Lulu's 80th birthday party. With her long white hair, the lithe, beautiful proprietress of Villa Los Roques still appears robust, although a recent stroke has affected her brain. By chance, she encounters Gerald, her ex-husband, whom for years she has managed to avoid despite both being residents of the small island of Mallorca. They exchange words; they scuffle; they plunge off a cliff and drown. What a stunning start to this novel, which proceeds, section by section, to go back in time, examining their doomed love story and the equally dismal relationship between her son, Luc, and Gerald's daughter, Aegina. The problem is that Lulu is mostly unlikable. She has very little use for her son, she carries grudges, she is uncommunicative. Although she comes across to her guests as Meryl Streep's character in Mamma Mia!, there's something disturbed about Lulu. VERDICT Although there are similarities, this title is not Jess Walter's Beautiful Ruins, and readers hoping for another winsome, humorous, hopeful love story will be disappointed. Nichols has written more of a tragedy, with the only glimmer of light coming in the final pages. However, the lovely Mallorca backdrop may be enough to satisfy some.-Christine Perkins, Whatcom Cty. Lib. Syst., Bellingham, WA © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Nichols (Voyage to the North Star) has conjured the perfect beach read: a romantic story set in a rich beach town on Mallorca called Cala Marsopa. Though you may not get sand between its easy-to-turn pages, you'll feel as though you have. Lulu Davenport, a lithe and headstrong beauty, is the doyenne of Villa Los Roques, a resort dubbed The Rocks by the English expatriate layabouts who return annually each summer. The book opens in 2005, in Lulu's "ninth decade," when a surprise encounter with her estranged first husband, Gerald Rutledge, awakens "a flame of old anger." Gerald gave up his sailing life and made a permanent home in Cala Marsopa following their brief marriage, though they have managed to avoid each other almost completely for nearly 60 years. Nichols crafts the story in reverse, moving back through time and revealing that even though these former lovers have had little contact, they have left deep imprints on each other. Meanwhile, another story of love, separation, and the "horrible, stunting gap between dream and desire and practicality" is revealed through the deeply intertwined lives of Lulu's and Gerald's respective children: Luc Franklin, the son of an American father and raised in Paris, himself a summer-only resident of The Rocks, and Aegina, the dark-eyed daughter of Gerald and a local. The two central stories engage the readers' sympathies and emotions, while Nichols colors in the background with the indelible imagery of the wind-swept Mediterranean, and the louche exploits of the careless adults and the tanned teenagers who can slip effortlessly from English to Spanish to French, but have a harder time growing up beyond the endless summer. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Set chiefly on Mallorca, this languorous novel begins in 2005 with a freak accident that kills British octogenarians Lulu Davenport and Gerald Rutledge. The story then travels in reverse all the way back to 1948, when Lulu and Gerald were briefly married. Following their split, the staunchly self-reliant Lulu buys and presides for more than 50 years over a hotel called Villa los Roques the Rocks. Gerald, meanwhile, uses the proceeds from his book, which recounts his navigation of Odysseus' route, to buy a small farm where he ekes out a living manufacturing olive oil. The travels of Odysseus are a recurring motif, and the novel's pages are liberally salted with references to Homer and The Odyssey. In later marriages, Lulu has a son, Luc, and Gerald has a daughter, Aegina; these two bob in and out of each other's lives. As the book voyages deeper into the past, each section adds another layer, until readers finally learn what caused Lulu and Gerald's rift. The proceedings are enriched by a sharply drawn cast of secondary players. Nichols deftly melds comedy and compassion, and his rendering of his Mediterranean setting will have readers packing their bags. Recommend this to readers who enjoy the novels of Jane Gardam.--Quinn, Mary Ellen Copyright 2010 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

The lives and loves of expatriates on Mallorca, shaped by a 60-year-old misunderstanding. Nichols' novel opens in 2005 with a chance meeting between Lulu Davenport and Gerald Rutledge on a cliff-top road near The Rocks, Lulu's seaside hotel. Though they live in the same small town on an island, the couple has managed to avoid each other since their very brief marriage in the 1940s, and this encounter immediately becomes a confrontation. In its course, the pair of 80-somethings accidentally tumble to their deaths. The remaining sections of the novelset in 1995, 1983, 1970, 1966, 1956, 1951, and 1948trace backward through the ripple effects of their falling-out to the incident that started it all, sweeping into the vortex their children by other spouses, and the generation after that as well. As intoxicating as a long afternoon sitting at the bar at The Rocks, the book features complications that include a book deal, a real estate swindle, a shipwreck, a drug bust, and many sexual affairs, including a couple of statutory rapes. All of it is absolutely riveting, leaving the reader desperate to depart immediately for swoony Mallorca, depicted from the time no one knew where it was (one would-be visitor goes to Monaco by mistake) to its present-day popularity. Nichols' expertise on everything from the Odyssey to olive oil to classic movies enriches the story, as does his profound understanding of his screwed-up cast of characters. "They were self-employed professionals, artists, writers, nonviolent sweet-natured criminals, mysteriously self-supporting or genteelly impoverished,....occasionally sleeping with one another in a manner that disturbed no one. In unspoken ways, they recognized one another, and everything they did made perfect sense to them, though they often arrived on the island as pariahs of the outside world, but were soothed and taken in by their steady, tolerant, and nonjudgmental friends and lovers on Mallorca." A literary island vacation with a worldly, wonderfully salacious storyteller. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Peter Nichols was born in 1950 in New York City. He has worked in advertising and as a screenwriter, and a shepherd in Wales, and he has sailed alone across the Atlantic. He divides his time between Europe and the United States. Peter Nichols is the author of the national bestseller A Voyage for Madmen and two other books, Sea Change: Alone Across the Atlantic in a Wooden Boat, a memoir, and the novel Voyage to the North Star. He has taught creative writing at NYU in Paris and Georgetown University, and presently teaches at Bowdoin College. He is lives in Maine with his wife and son.