Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Firefly
    Unavailable
    Firefly
    Unavailable
    Firefly
    Ebook174 pages2 hours

    Firefly

    By Janette Jenkins

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    On a secluded hillside in Jamaica lies Firefly, Noël Coward's peaceful retreat. Here, between sundowners and sunsets, brandies and cigarettes, the seventy-year-old Coward whiles away his days -- a comforting, frustrating pattern of unwanted breakfasts, reluctant walks, graceless dips in the pool -- in the company of his manservant Patrice. Set over a series of summer days in the early 1970s, Firefly flits through Coward's dreams and memories, his successes and regrets, against a sultry, seductive backdrop of blue skies and glistening water. Colorful and contemplative, this is a moving portrait of old age and friendship, and a poignant appraisal of a life well lived.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherEuropa Editions
    Release dateOct 1, 2013
    ISBN9781609451530
    Unavailable
    Firefly

    Related to Firefly

    Related ebooks

    General Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Soggy CHIPS

      Oct 19, 2022

      Soggy CHIPS
      7 min read

    • Article

      Selkie

      Feb 3, 2022

      Selkie
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Money Box

      Jun 10, 2022

      This is not a morality tale. It’s simply a story. It began innocently enough, over a lunch of beef pho in the Financial District, when my friend Paolo first mentioned the Money Box. Paolo was a pupa of industry then, waiting to emerge as a titan. He

      19 min read

    • Article

      Scotch and Water

      Dec 28, 2021

      Scotch and Water
      2 min read

    • Article

      ‘Pink Mountain on Locust Island’: Featured Fiction from Jamie Marina Lau

      Sep 9, 2020

      An excerpt from a debut novel Kirkus calls "hypnotizing and inscrutable." The post ‘Pink Mountain on Locust Island’: Featured Fiction from Jamie Marina Lau appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Summer Beach Reads

      Jan 10, 2021

      Summer Beach Reads
      7 min read

    • Article

      Talking RUBBISH

      Jul 1, 2020

      “It was like a moment from a Noël Coward play. You know, the bit where the lovers meet again for the first time in many years and it’s all slightly formal and awkward. There always seems to be a moment like that in a Noël Coward play. Not that I’m

      3 min read

    • Article

      Waving Not Drowning

      Aug 8, 2022

      Waving Not Drowning
      6 min read

    • Article

      Paul Heiney

      Aug 25, 2023

      Paul Heiney
      3 min read

    • Article

      Be My Guest

      Aug 26, 2019

      Be My Guest
      5 min read

    • Article

      Coasting The Gulf

      May 17, 2021

      A PERFECT ROAD TRIP BEGINS AT HAPPY HOUR, at Superior Seafood and Oyster Bar on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans, for a dozen (or maybe two) oysters on the half shell and a frozen French 75. I know frozen drinks are for teenagers, and I am not one,

      5 min read

    • Article

      Adventures In Cider Making

      Nov 28, 2023

      Adventures In Cider Making
      3 min read

    • Article

      Picking Through The Bones

      Nov 1, 2019

      Picking Through The Bones
      6 min read

    • Article

      People Are Strange

      Oct 13, 2019

      People Are Strange
      5 min read

    • Article

      Paul Heiney

      Aug 25, 2023

      Paul Heiney
      3 min read

    • Article

      Five Poems

      Jul 1, 2018

      Without the adventof Stockholm Syndrome,how could I havelearned to love myself so much? I’m asking Godand New York, can anyonehelp me? (An all-but-audible “or else.”) The captain’s chair:it’s beginning to smella little too much like me. Again.But the

      4 min read

    • Article

      Strange Season

      Jun 4, 2020

      Strange Season
      14 min read

    • Article

      Celeste Barber On Christmas Homecomings

      Nov 26, 2022

      I bloody love Christmas, love it, and you can't beat Christmas in Australia – beach, sun, sand, crisp white wine that you drink far too much of in the weeks leading up to it because the minute that new year swings around, you won't be touching that s

      4 min read

    • Article

      Coasting The Gulf

      May 17, 2021

      A PERFECT ROAD TRIP BEGINS AT HAPPY HOUR, at Superior Seafood and Oyster Bar on St. Charles Avenue in New Orleans, for a dozen (or maybe two) oysters on the half shell and a frozen French 75. I know frozen drinks are for teenagers, and I am not one,

      5 min read

    • Article

      A Day At The Beach For Aphrodite

      Jul 1, 2023

      A Day At The Beach For Aphrodite
      14 min read

    • Article

      It’s Chucking-out Time

      Jun 11, 2020

      AS soon as the starter pistol banged, I threw the fishing kit into the car and went to see ‘someone who isn’t a direct member of your household’. Partly it was to chuck a fly, partly to savour the sheer joy of escaping the family. Much as one loves o

      3 min read

    • Article

      Remains

      Sep 1, 2017

      THIS IS what you think your mother’s remains will look like. The ash will be black, like all that soot in the fireplace. It will be heavy, like wet sand. There will not be too much of it. It will fit in a small urn with intricate designs on the borde

      6 min read

    • Article

      ‘Cygnet’: Featured Fiction from Season Butler

      Jun 25, 2019

      A excerpt from Butler's debut coming-of-age novel, set in an appealingly rich world with quirky, flawed characters and a dramatic oceanfront landscape. The post ‘Cygnet’: Featured Fiction from Season Butler appeared first on The Millions.

      4 min read

    • Article

      When Good Gifts Go BAD

      Nov 21, 2022

      ’Tis the season for gift guides and mall car parks, for emergency vet visits to get the tinsel out of the cat and for absolutely refusing to roast chestnuts on open fires. As the magic of Christmas washes over us with the force of an All Blacks’ fron

      3 min read

    • Article

      Lil Spin

      May 17, 2019

      Lil Spin
      8 min read

    Reviews for Firefly

    3.5/5

    14 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 5/5
      A beautifully written book about the last months of Noel Coward's life. Firefly is the name of his retreat set in the grounds of his Jamaican house, and that is where he died. The book is like a polished gem, every word is perfectly chosen to evoke a picture of the great man struggling with his increasingly deteriorating health as memories of his childhood, theatrical triumphs and disasters, friendships and sexual encounters come and go. The relationship between him and the young Jamaican who acts as general factotum is both funny and poignant. I have already recommended this book to several friends.
    • 3/5
      "Firefly" has some charming passages and achieves a nice effect in portraying the sad final years of one of the great entertainers of the mid twentieth century. I wonder though if the author's goals in writing the book were perhaps excessively modest. "Firefly" is really a novella, and it could be that it falls uneasily between the concision of a short story and the complexity of a longer novel.It also concerns me somewhat that the book fits too easily into a cultural pattern that has been been set up recently in fictional accounts of famous persons. It's as if there's a delight in showing old people in decline, approaching death. I'm thinking of films like "Iris" - about the last years of the novelist Iris Murdoch, when she was suffering from Alzheimers - and also of "The Iron Lady," the Margaret Thatcher bio-pic. It seems like there is a trend to portray these important notables - as Janette Jenkins does also here in "Firefly" - at the end of their lives, when they have lost their powers and characteristics that made them notable, imporant and interesting in the first place. Yes, it is true that getting old can be devastating and ravaging, but I would prefer to have been shown more of what made Noel Coward a significant cultural icon in the first place - the wit, the style, the charm, the "design for living". If people are interested in Noel Coward in 2014 - and I'm not sure that many people are - it's not because he became a doddering old fogey sitting by a swimming pool in Jamaica.