Simply Heaven

Simply Heaven by Serena Mackesy is a new novel about a down-to-earth Australian reflexologist, Melody who falls in love with Englishman Rufus during a Mediterranean holiday. They decide on a spur-of-the-moment marriage in Malta. In this interview author Serena Mackesy reveals why she is a big fan of Malta:

Serena Mackesy: I just love the place; fell in love with it when I went to stay with friends in the container port of Birzebuggia 12 years ago and can never go back enough. It's the most centering place in the world, particularly if you're mildly barking. I love everything about the it. Well, everything apart from St Paul's Bay and Popeye Village. In no particular order, my edited highlights are: fields of rock and rubble that are covered, in Spring, with creeping thyme and dwarf irises; a language that can turn "St Jacob's Alley" into "Squaq San Jakbu" and "information" into "tal'genn"; walls made of old fridges; 6,500-year-old temples that have none of the hands-off, film set qualities of Stonehenge; the Elidor-like ghostliness of Valletta at night; roof dogs; the fact that EU safety regulations don't apply there, so that you have a very real danger of being clocked by a rogue Catherine Wheel at a village festa; the relentless eccentricity of the people; rock diving at the Delimara salt pans; forests of television aerials on piled-up sixteenth-century tenements; long rabbit lunches at Bobbyland on the Dingli cliffs on a Sunday; baroque churches in two-horse villages and the gobsmacking, breathtaking, weeping-fit-inducing view of Grand Harbour from the Upper Baracca Gardens. And the secret beach on Gozo, but that's a secret.

Serena Mackesy - from Chicklit, a site that celebrates women's contemporary fiction and contemporary woman's lifestyle.

A review of Simply Heaven from Random House