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A funny, wistful and utterly beguiling novel about a man whose life is falling apart, and how he learns to put it back together JÓNAS FEELS LIKE HIS LIFE IS OVER. His wife has left him, his mother is slipping deeper into dementia, and his daughter is no longer who he thought. So he comes up with a foolproof plan: to buy a one-way ticket to a chaotic, war-ravaged country and put an end to it all. But on arriving at Hotel Silence, he finds his plans – and his anonymity – begin to dissolve under the foreign sun. Now there are other things that need his attention, like the crumbling hotel itself, the staff who run it, and his unusual fellow guests. And soon it becomes clear that Jónas must...
“Will appeal to readers of Elena Ferrante and Margaret Atwood . . . the unusual setting offers an interesting twist on the portrait of an artist as a young woman.” —Bookpage In 1960s Iceland, Hekla dreams of being a writer. In a nation of poets, where each household proudly displays leatherbound volumes of the Sagas, and there are more writers per capita than anywhere else in the world, there is only one problem: she is a woman. After packing her few belongings, including James Joyces’s Ulysses and a Remington typewriter, Hekla heads for Reykjavik with a manuscript buried in her bags. She moves in with her friend Jon, a gay man who longs to work in the theatre, but can only find dang...
A hilarious and moving road trip around Iceland in an old car, told by a recently divorced woman with a five year-old boy 'on loan' After a day of being dumped - twice - and accidentally killing a goose, the narrator begins to dream of tropical holidays far away from the chaos of her current life. instead, she finds her plans wrecked by her best friend's deaf-mute son, thrust into her reluctant care. But when a shared lottery ticket nets the two of them over 40 million kroner, she and the boy head off on a road trip across iceland, taking in cucumber-farming hotels, dead sheep, and any number of her exes desperate for another chance. Blackly comic and uniquely moving, Butterflies in November...
Tackle the challenges of memoir writing and share your story. 'Cathy is the person who first told me to write about my mental health when I was nervous to do so. She is a great writer herself and this is brilliant.' - Matt Haig, author of Reasons to Stay Alive Why do we want to write and what stops us? How do we fight the worry that no-one will care what we have to say? What can we do to overcome the obstacles in our way? Sunday Times bestselling author Cathy Rentzenbrink shows you how to tackle all this and more in Write It All Down, a guide to putting your life on the page. Complete with a compendium of advice from amazing writers such as Dolly Alderton, Adam Kay and Candice Carty-Williams...
"A beautiful, luminous novel that goes straight to the heart of life" Rebecca Wait, author of I'm Sorry You Feel That Way "Charming, funny and deeply wise... brought me nose to nose with the earthy, transcendent business of pregnancy and birth" Jo Browning Wroe, author of A Terrible Kindness "Quirky, elusive and unique" Nick Bradley, author of The Cat and The City "One of those small stories that manages to feel very big indeed" Bobby Palmer, author of Isaac and the Egg With just over a week until Christmas, Dómhildur delivers her one thousandth, nine hundred and ninety second baby. Beginnings and endings are her family trade; she is a midwife descended from a long line of midwives on her m...
A unique rendering of Iceland in winter by a renowned photographer and writer.
'A potent, atmospheric story of creative frustration and fulfilment. I loved the wry, tender voice of Ólafsdóttir's narrator. I'm now going to read all of her other novels' Megan Hunter, author of The Harpy 'Such great writing here, poetic and raw in places... Only a great book can make you feel you're really there, a thousand miles and a generation away. I loved it' Kit de Waal, author of My Name is Leon Born in a remote part of Iceland, and named after a volcano, Hekla always knew she wanted to be a writer. She heads for Reyjkavik, with a Remington typewriter and a manuscript hidden in her suitcase, hoping to make it in the nation of poets. But this is the 1960s, and Hekla soon discovers that there's more demand for a beauty queen than a woman writer in this conservative, male-dominated world. Along with her friend Jón John, a gay man who dreams of working in the theatre, she soon learns that she must conceal her true self to have any hope of success. But the world outside is changing, and Hekla knows she must escape to find freedom abroad, whatever must be left behind.
A “startlingly original” novel of “recursive loops through the mind of a woman who is breaking down from not making the art she absolutely must make” (Alexander Chee, Paris Review). Alma and her family live close to the land, raising chickens and sheep. While her husband works at a nearby college, she stays home with their young children, cleans, searches for secondhand goods online, and reads books by the women writers she adores. Then, one night, she abruptly leaves it all behind—speeding through the darkness, away from their Vermont homestead, bound for New York. In a series of flashbacks, Alma reveals the circumstances and choices that led to this moment: the joys and claustrop...
A big–hearted novel “about the grace of friends and family, the true depth and patience of love, and the impossible privilege of what it means to be a father” (Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You). For young couple Taz and Marnie, their fixer–upper is the symbol of their new life together: a work in progress, the beginning of something grand, all the more so when they learn a baby is on her way. But the blueprint for the perfect life eludes Taz when Marnie dies in childbirth, plummeting the taciturn carpenter headfirst into the new, strange world of fatherhood alone, a landscape of contradictions, of great joy and sorrow. With a supporting cast as rich and compelling as the wild Montana landscape, the novel follows Taz's first two years as a father―a job no one can be fully prepared for. The five–time winner of the Pacific Northwest Bookseller Award with more than eleven books in over twenty years, Pete Fromm has become one of the West’s best literary legends. A Job You Mostly Won’t Know How To Do beautifully captures people who end up building a life that is both unexpected and brave.
Sammy Mountjoy, artist, rises from poverty and an obscure birth to see his pictures hung in the Tate Gallery. Swept into World War Two, he is taken as a prisoner-of-war, threatened with torture, then locked in a cell of total darkness to wait. He emerges from his cell transfigured from his ordeal, and begins to realise what man can be and what he has gradually made of himself through his own choices. But did those accumulated choices also begin to deprive him of his free will.