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A Bunch of Fives
Since the publication of Four Bare Legs in a Bed, her first collection, Helen Simpson has been hailed as one of the best short story writers at work today. These are wickedly funny, heartfelt, and sensuous stories that deal with the full stretch, from birth to death and everything in between.
Four Bare Legs In a Bed
Brilliant, funny and tragic, Four Bare Legs in a Bed is an outstanding and invigorating collection of short stories. In Simpson's singular and opulent voice, we hear of the mixed blessings of independence and marriage, of sex and babies. From a bed that transforms the lives of a struggling couple to a chorus of midwives telling the dramatic story of a birth, this is a playful, unique set of stories to treasure.
Cockfosters
Cockfosters is a funny, frank and forceful story collection dealing with ageing, ambition and the patterns of repetition and renewal found in long friendships and marriages. It opens irresistible new windows onto the world from Arizona to Dubai and from Moscow to Berlin. Turning both a panoramic and a zoom lens on the way we live now, these stories range through hitch-hiking in Bohemian forest-land to cresting the waves of the Aegean to the mending of hearts and the recovery of lost property at the end of the Piccadilly Line. Helen Simpson writes with great warmth, wit and candour about the complexities of modern life, and this new collection shows why she is hailed as one of the best short story writers at work in the world today.
Hey Yeah Right Get A Life
Helen Simpson's third collection is a bold, honest exploration of the trials and the rewards of motherhood. ‘Her stories are - for those who, like me, recognise the truth in every word - like a reprieve... Sharp, poetic and marvellously witty’ Kate Kellaway, Observer Here are tales of a highflyer stuck at an interminable Burns Night celebration, increasingly aware of the babysitter waiting for her at home; an exhausted mother longing for adult conversation but whose son unwittingly precludes it; and a teenage girl whose fraught encounter with a harried mum of one brings newfound appreciation for her own capable mother of four. Most strikingly of all we meet Dorrie, whose efforts to calm her tinderbox of a family leave her struggling to contain her own emotions. Hey Yeah Right Get a Life is a singular achievement: relatable, perceptive and utterly poignant. ‘It's a brilliant, painful, funny and courageous book’ Esther Freud, Guardian
The Ritz London Book Of Afternoon Tea
Taking tea is one of the quintessentially English occasions, and who is a greater authority on the subject than the sumptuous Ritz London Hotel? This charming Edwardian-style book captures the essence of this traditional British pastime, and provides us with all the expertise on the ceremony as well as the recipes. Stories about the legendary afternoon teas at The Ritz and fascinating details about the history of tea drinking are complemented with passages from such diverse writers as Charles Dickens to Oscar Wilde. Over fifty recipes are included for different kinds of afternoon tea specialities, from delicate sandwiches, strawberry shortcake and rose petal jam, to crumpets and muffins for hearty teas in front of a roaring fire. The author gives an infallible guide to the many blends of tea and their suitability to particular occasions. Beautifully presented and delightfully illustrated, this book is the perfect gift for tea drinkers everywhere.
In the Driver's Seat
A dark, dazzling, surprisingly funny new collection of stories (“Masterly” —Adam Mars Jones, The Observer; “A virtuoso performance” —Jane Shilling, The Sunday Telegraph) about single women and wives in various phases of midlife—anxious mothers, besotted mothers, beset mothers—in a (futile) search for security and consolation. Helen Simpson’s stories are short but by no means small. One story takes the Iraq war as its subject; another describes a smoker’s reprieve from death by lung cancer; in another, a simple tale of home maintenance—a woman in a conversation with the carpenter replacing her door after a break-in—becomes a deftly sketched study of grief. In still ano...
In-flight Entertainment
Poignant, perceptive and dazzling, in this, her long awaited new collection, Helen Simpson offers acute portraits of lives in transition: of changes for the better, lives stalled and in freefall; of love, loss, and sudden revelations. Warm and funny, the
Motherhood
Enjoy Helen Simpson’s sharply funny, humane take on the everyday joys and struggles of motherhood. Welcome to motherhood – a land of aching fatigue, constant self-sacrifice and thankless servitude, a land of bottomless devotion, small hands and feet like warm pink roses, and velvet kisses. Here is a land where men and women, once carefree and engrossed in work and sex, now try to solve age-old arguments and search fruitlessly for another hour in the day. Perhaps you know this land well, or perhaps you’re entering it for the first time – either way, you need these honest funny humane stories from an expert guide. Selected from Helen Simpson’s short story collections Dear George, Hey Yeah Right Get a Life and Constitutional. VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS. A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human Also in the Vintage Minis series: Language by Xiaolu Guo Fatherhood by Karl Ove Knausgaard Eating by Nigella Lawson Drinking by John Cheever
Getting a Life
Hilarious, dark, and thoroughly entertaining, Getting a Life proves Helen Simpson to be one of the finest observers of women on the edge. Set in and around contemporary London, these nine stories explore both the blisses and irritations of domestic life. An ambitious teenager vows never to settle for any of the adult lives she sees around her. Two old friends get tipsy at a small cafe and end up revealing more than they intended. In a boutique so exclusive that entrance requires a password, a frazzled careerwoman explores the anesthetizing effect of highly impractical clothing. And in the mesmerizing title story, a mother of three takes life one day at a time, while pushing the ominous question of whether she wants to firmly to one side.
Justice for William
Wendy Crompton's son William and his girlfriend Fiona were killed in a horrendous attack by a young man when William was just 18 years old. Justice for William shares Wendy's experience of what followed the murders when, as a secondary victim, she was treated in ways that ranged from insensitivity to downright prejudice and lack of respect. She was kept 'out of the loop' that is the criminal justice system, causing her anxiety, stress, and mistrust of everyone from the police, paramedics and the psychiatrists, to the coroner's officer who prevented her from kissing William goodbye and ejected her from the mortuary. Furthermore, the doctors could not satisfactorily explain why they had released her son's killer, the detective said that her son was better off dead than alive, and the funeral director told her "You can't afford flowers." This hard-hitting, remarkable, and challenging book — that should be read by anyone and everyone who comes into contact with victims of crime — also tells of the good that exists in many people and the decency of those who saw Wendy through her experiences. With a Foreword by Terry Waite CBE.
