Hammick, Georgina

(British, 1939– )

Hammick published a collection of poems in 1976, but her first major success was with her debut short story collection, People for Lunch (1987), which quickly became a best-seller. Disappointment, motherhood, family tension, injustice, and deception are major themes here, which continue into her next collection, Spoilt (1992), and are also resonant in her novel, The Arizona Game (1996), whose narrator, Hannah, looks back at a childhood fractured by the death of her younger brother, and tries to come to terms with the dysfunctional relationships of her adult life. Hammick's interest is in the messy chaos and secret unhappinesses of everyday life, but her tone is light and often witty, and her analyses of character are even-handed and exceptionally acute.

Elizabeth Bowen, Jane Austen, Kazuo Ishiguro  SR