title: The Oracles
text: # The Oracles
  
  The Oracles is a 1955 comic novel by the British writer Margaret Kennedy. Kennedy was best known for The Constant Nymph and its sequel The Fool of the Family, but had enjoyed renewed success in the early 1950s, and her previous work Troy Chimneys was awarded the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. It was published in the United States by Rinehart under the alternative title of Act of God.
  
  ## Synopsis
  
  During a heavy storm, a piece of garden furniture is struck by lightning and twisted out of shape. It comes to rest in the garden of the bohemian artist, convincing everyone that it is a wonderful form of modern sculpture. His intellectual friends he try to convince the council of the provincial English town on the Bristol Channel to purchase it with public funds.
  
  