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The Smoking Diaries Volume 4
Coda is Simon Gray's powerful account of the year in which he struggled to come to terms with terminal lung cancer. Darkly comic depictions of the medical team are set against joyful accounts of sunlit days with his beloved wife, Victoria. Written with exceptional candour and a poignant reluctance to leave this world behind, Simon Gray's Coda is as life-affirming as it is heart-rending. Sadly, Coda was published posthumously: Gray died in August 2008.
Simon Gray: Plays 4
'Sharp, funny and clever . . . What a pleasure to re-encounter a play that combines unabashed intelligence and zinging wit with a rare generosity of spirit.' Daily Telegraph on The Common Pursuit 'Gray's stature as one of the handful of great tragi-comic English dramatists of the second half of the twentieth century would appear now to be undisputed.' Howard Jacobson, Critical Quarterly Hidden Laughter 'A sad divine comedy, superbly written. Gray nurses his characters and cares for them, but he never pampers them, or pities them, or presumes to use them as his spokesman. In this respect, he has become an English Chekhov... At the same time, Gray dispenses some of the incandescent malice and moral savagery of Coward at his acid best... But, of course, comparisons can only help you get your bearings. Gray is entirely his own man in this painful, querulous, warm, hard and mature play.' Sunday Times
Simon Gray: Plays 3
'The brave little lives that Gray so compassionately illuminates could be lived by any of us, and that's why they arouse emotions that are anything but small.' New York Times on Quartermaine's Terms
Simon Gray Unbound
The work of English playwright Simon Gray (1936–2008) has always resisted ideological and stylistic labels. His artistic independence has also had an unwelcome side effect: It cost him the critical attention garnered by his peers. This book, the first monograph on Gray, examines his oeuvre from the early plays, which hack away at the formalism and humanism of traditional English satire, to the later ones, in which he explores English professionals and their problems connecting with each other. If Gray remains the least known major English dramatist of his day, he’s also one of the boldest and best.
Simon Gray: Plays 2
'A superbly written play, a funny play, an agonising play. It is, moreover, a play of truth and insight. A play to savour.' Punch on Otherwise Engaged 'Life in the theatre hasn't brought me anything more rewarding than directing Simon Gray's plays.' Harold Pinter Plaintiffs and Defendants Exceptionally good... the play gave such a rending picture of married mess that it was hard to know where to look.' Clive James, Observer 'Simon Gray is the one [TV playwright] whose work I most relish seeing for his acerbic wit, wonderful ironies and above all for his care with our mother tongue.' Dennis Potter
Close of Play
THE STORY: It is characteristic of Simon Gray to place a witty, intellectual hero center stage, and then systematically and ruthlessly reveal the barrenness of his soul and spirit. In CLOSE OF PLAY (the title is a cricket term) the central figure i
The Complete Smoking Diaries
When he turned sixty-five, playwright Simon Gray began to keep a diary in which he reflected on a life filled with cigarettes (continuing), alcohol (stopped), several triumphs and many more disasters, shame, adultery, friendship and love. Bringing together the four parts of The Smoking Diaries (The Smoking Diaries, The Year of the Jouncer, The Last Cigarette, and Coda) this beautiful volume is filled with comedy and serious reflection, sharp observation and painful self-disclosure. A brilliant and moving account of life's unsteady progress, it takes the reader to the heart of one man's brilliant struggle towards some kind of personal truth.
Shades of Simon Gray
Simon Gray is the ideal teenager — smart, reliable, hardworking, trustworthy. Or is he? After Simon crashes his car into The Liberty Tree, another portrait starts to emerge. Soon an investigation has begun into computer hacking at Simon’s high school, for it seems tests are being printed out before they are given. Could Simon be involved? Simon, meanwhile, is in a coma — but is this another appearance that may be deceiving? For inside his own head, Simon can walk around and talk to some people. He even seems to be having a curious conversation with a man who was hung for murder 200 years ago, in the branches of the same tree Simon crashed into. What can a 200-year-old murder have to do with Simon’s accident? And how do we know who is really innocent and who is really guilty? From the Hardcover edition.
Simon Gray: Plays 1
Butley 'What is so wondrous about a play so basically defeatist and hurtful is its ability to be funny. The stark, unsentimental approach to the homosexual relationship, the cynical send-up of academic life, the skeptical view of the teacher-pupil associations are all stunningly illuminated by continuous explosions of sardonic, needling, feline, vituperative and civilised lines.' Evening Standard
Enter a Fox
How much can go wrong in a day? How much can go wrong in a life? In this chronicle of a year of things going wrong (and just occasionally right), the author of the acclaimed The Smoking Diaries meets with triumph and disaster and treats those two impostors just the same - which is to say with the mixture of wit, anger, vexation and candour that has made Simon Gray one of Britain's greatest writers of comedy - including the comedy that lurks in tragedy.
