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Winner of the 2019 Wellcome Book Prize Winner of the 2019 Republic of Consciousness Prize Shortlisted for the 2018 Goldsmiths Prize Shortlisted for the 2019 James Tait Black Prize Longlisted for the 2019 Rathbones Folio Prize Taking its cue from the arrest and legally enforced chemical castration of the mathematician Alan Turing, Murmur is the account of a man who responds to intolerable physical and mental stress with love, honour and a rigorous, unsentimental curiosity about the ways in which we perceive ourselves and the world. Formally audacious, daring in its intellectual inquiry and unwaveringly humane, Will Eaves’s Murmur is a rare achievement.
Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize 2014 The Absent Therapist is a book of soundings, a jostle of voices that variously argue, remember, explain, justify, speculate and meander . . . Sons and lovers, wanderers, wonderers, stayers, leavers, readers and believers: 'The biggest surprise of all is frequently that things and people really are as they seem.' 'The whole book is like someone deeply charismatic and charming daring you not to find them insane. It's wonderful.' Nicholas Lezard, The Guardian 'I was gripped and awed by Will Eaves's The Absent Therapist, touching, addictive and unlike any other book.' Thomas Adès, TLS 'Books of the Year' 'The Absent Therapist is a miniature but infinite novel, and unlike anything I've read before. It's just achingly good.' Luke Kennard
In 1983, an ordinary teenager called Daniel Rathbone fell in love, spurned a friend, and stumbled on the ability to see in the dark. On his twenty-fifth birthday, Daniel is bequeathed a second no less unusual gift - a Victorian writing box, the legacy of his father and the repository of his youthful secrets, and of his current feelings of guilt.When a visit from the once-spurned friend, Carey Schumacher, coincides with the death of a contemporary, Daniel's peculiar endowments are enlisted to make lasting sense of lost time and place. From Bath to Brixton, from the 1960s to the 90s, The Oversight follows a trail of thwarted and victorious affections. It is an intently comic tale of vision and...
The Alldens live in a ramshackle house in suburban Bath. Don and Emily have four children: confident Liz, satirical Clive, shy Lotte, and Benjamin, the late arrival. Together they take the usual knocks, go to work, go abroad, go to university, go to pieces. Don and Emily stick it out, their strong marriage tested by experience and frustrated by love for Clive, the ardent boxing fan at odds with himself, their special child. But then ordinary is special, too, as the Alldens will discover thirty years later when Emily falls ill and her children come home to say goodbye. Their unforgettable story is an intimate record of survival that is clear-eyed, funny and deeply moving.
There is in the short story, at its most characteristic, something we do not often find in the novel, Frank O’Connor wrote, ‘an intense awareness of human loneliness.’ The stories shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award with BookTrust 2017 all feature characters that are disconnected, willingly or unwillingly, from those around them: a mysterious out-of-towner is shunned by her new colleagues; a grieving husband retreats into his old compulsion for hoarding; a promising academic risks his career for a casual liaison with a younger man. And whether we follow the characters’ need to be alone – like the fisherman drifting dangerously far from shore – or trace it back to i...
_______________ 'Very original ... I loved it' - Mick Jagger 'This is a little marvel ... funny, clever, illuminating, deeply kind-hearted' - Nicholas Lezard, Guardian 'A lovely little novel ... written with beguiling simplicity' - Lionel Shriver, Daily Telegraph _______________ A perfectly-crafted, funny and moving masterpiece about love, family, passion and whether or not one should always play by the rules. Friday: as a Test match between England and India begins, a woman's attention is torn between her husband's insistence on explaining the rules of cricket, her lover's preference for mystery, and the worrying disappearance of her sixteen-year-old stepson. By Tuesday night the outcome of the match will become clear - but whatever happens, the lives of the players will be changed forever.
This book documents the impulses that drive Elisabeth Eaves' insatiable hunger for the rush of the unfamiliar. She is both restless vagabond and astute observer as she crisscrosses five continents, chasing the exotic in both culture and romance. She loses herself in the jungles of Papua New Guinea, rekindles old love and new passion in Cairo, and finds an intinerant brotherhood of raucous men in the land Down Under. Like the random possessions she leaves in her wake, from Australia to Yemen, she also leaves behind a string of lovers. But this is about more than just sensual conquest; it is also a journey of self-discovery, in which her pursuit ultimately guides her home - back cover.
A SUNDAY TIMES HISTORICAL NOVEL OF THE YEAR. Tenth-century Iceland. In the midwinter darkness, on the lifeless black soils of a newly settled land, two friends kill a man. Kjaran, an itinerant storyteller, and Gunnar, a once-feared warrior, must make a choice: conceal the deed or confess to it and pay the blood price to the dead man's brothers. For the right reasons, they make the wrong choice. Kjaran and Gunnar's fateful decision will leave them fighting for their lives, fighting to retain their humanity as Iceland's unyielding code of honour ignites a remorseless blood feud that will consume all it touches. 'Smile of the Wolf bares its fangs from the first page. Like a medieval tapestry, the storytelling is rich with imagery. Readers will be lured spellbound into this lyrical and evocative Icelandic saga. It deserves huge success' DAVID GILMAN.
Step into the heartwarming world of family and self-discovery with Dorothy Canfield Fisher's beloved novel, "The Home-Maker." Follow the journey of the Knapp family as they navigate the challenges of traditional gender roles, societal expectations, and the pursuit of personal fulfillment. But amidst the routines of daily life and the pressures of conformity, a question arises: What transformations await the Knapps as they redefine the meaning of success, happiness, and fulfillment? As Fisher's poignant narrative unfolds, immerse yourself in the lives of Evangeline and Lester Knapp, a couple struggling to find their place in a world bound by convention. Experience the joys and sorrows of pare...