Autobiography: writers Books

Book SynopsisElizabeth Smart's passionate fictional account of her intense love-affair with the poet George Barker, described by Angela Carter as Like MADAME BOVARY blasted by lightning A masterpiece'.One day, while browsing in a London bookshop, Elizabeth Smart chanced upon a slim volume of poetry by George Barker and fell passionately in love with him through the printed word. Eventually they communicated directly and, as a result of Barker's impecunious circumstances, Elizabeth Smart flew both him and his wife from Japan, where he was teaching, to join her in the United States. Thus began one of the most extraordinary, intense and ultimately tragic love affairs of our time. They never married but Elizabeth bore George Barker four children and their relationship provided the impassioned inspiration for one of the most moving and immediate chronicles of a love affair ever written By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept'.Originally published in 1945, this remarkable book is now widely identTrade Review‘Like Madame Bovary blasted by lightening … A masterpiece.’ Angela Carter ‘At some point every good reader comes across “By Grand Central Station I sat Down and Wept”. And he or she recognises an emotion essential and permanent to us.’ Michael Ondaatje ‘A revelation…This short, powerful work has a profound influence on me and was one of the factors that made me want to be a writer.’ Beryl Bainbridge ‘I doubt if there are more than half a dozen such masterpieces of poetic prose in the world.’ Brigid Brophy ‘Explores a passion between a man and two women, one of them his wife – a love despairing and triumphant upon which the reader may gaze, awed, appalled, or even, perhaps, envious.’ The Times ‘Few writers have ever captured the full honesty of what passion means as shockingly and as piercingly as Smart. Today, its force still strikes us hard in the face, a beautiful and bloody blow.’ Lesley McDowell, Independent on Sunday ‘Constructed as a single, sustained climax, it is like a cry of ecstasy which, without changing volume or pitch, becomes a cry of agony.’ Spectator ‘The emotion, the truth and abject affliction comes through…to move the reader, and even to awe him.’ London Review of Books

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Book Synopsis_______________''A brutal, moving memoir Anyone who emerges from America's black working-class youth with words as fine as Ward's deserves a hearing'' - Guardian''Raw, beautiful and dangerous'' - New York Times Book Review''Lavishly endowed with literary craft and hard-earned wisdom'' - Time_______________The beautiful, haunting memoir from Jesmyn Ward, the first woman to win the National Book Award twice''And then we heard the rain falling and that was the blood falling; and when we came to get in the crops, it was dead men that we reaped'' - Harriet TubmanJesmyn Ward's acclaimed memoir shines a light on the community she comes from in the small town of DeLisle, Mississippi, a place of quiet beauty and fierce attachment. Here, in the space of four years, she lost five young black men dear to her, including her beloved brother to accidents, murder and suicide. Their deaths were seemingly unconnected, yet their liveTrade ReviewA brutal, moving memoir … Anyone who emerges from America’s black working-class youth with words as fine as Ward’s deserves a hearing * Guardian *When I first read her memoir, Men We Reaped – about five young black men, all of whom died within a span of four years of four years in her life – I understood the weight of grief as one struggles to live ... She is a modern-day William Faulkner, painting tapestries of an America that has not been heard -- Lee Daniels, Oscar-nominated director and producerRaw, beautiful and dangerous ... Ward's singular voice and her full embrace of her anger and sorrow set this work apart from those that have trodden similar ground * New York Times Book Review *Acute and often beautiful * Financial Times *Haunting -- Laurie Penny * New Statesman Books of the Year *Elegiac, rage-filled, and uncommonly brave * Vogue *A brilliant book about beauty and death ... Ward is one of those rare writers who’s traveled across America’s deepening class rift with her sense of truth intact * Los Angeles Times *An important, and perhaps even essential, book * San Francisco Chronicle *Lavishly endowed with literary craft and hard-earned wisdom * Time *A memoir about loss in rural Mississippi that burns with brilliance * Harper's Bazaar *A lovely book about stuff so painful that Ward must have written it in a kind of fever ... The final chapters are so moving that you have to avert your eyes, both for the trauma and the tenderness * Entertainment Weekly *A memoir that, in plainsong prose punctuated with sudden poetic flashes, schools us in the unforgiving experiences from which [Ward] has drawn her triumphal fiction . . . Unvarnished and penetrating * Elle *

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Book SynopsisGeorge Orwell was an inveterate keeper of diaries. The Orwell Diaries presents eleven of them, covering the period 1931-1949, and follows Orwell from his early years as a writer to his last literary notebook. An entry from 1931 tells of a communal shave in the Trafalgar Square fountains, while notes from his travels through industrial England show the development of the impassioned social commentator. This same acute power of observation is evident in his diaries from Morocco, as well as at home, where his domestic diaries chart the progress of his garden and animals with a keen eye; the wartime diaries, from descriptions of events overseas to the daily violence closer to home, describe astutely his perspective on the politics of both, and provide a new and entirely refreshing insight into Orwell''s character and his great works.

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Book SynopsisA unique, tender and witty memoir of surviving the tough streets of small town Scotland during the Margaret Thatcher years________________________''Shocking and funny in equal measure, and will have you weeping with laughter and sorrow'' Independent on Sunday''A work of stealthy genius'' Maggie O''Farrell''Certain memoirs catch a moment and seem to define it, bottle it ... hugely entertaining'' Sunday TimesIt''s 12 October 1984. An IRA bomb blows apart the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Miraculously, Margaret Thatcher survives. In small-town Scotland, eight-year-old Damian Barr watches in horror as his mum rips her wedding ring off and packs their bags. He knows he, too, must survive. Damian, his sister and his Catholic mum move in with her sinister new boyfriend while his Protestant dad shacks up with the glamorous Mary the Canary. Divided by sectarian suspicion, the community is held together by the sprawling Ravenscraig Steelworks. BuTrade ReviewShocking and funny in equal measure, and will have you weeping with laughter and sorrow -- Katy Guest * Independent on Sunday *The wonderful story of a remarkable man, Maggie & Me is heartbreaking and heartwarming. As gripping as a thriller, laugh-out-loud funny and deeply touching, this book will resonate long after you finish it. A triumph -- SJ Watson, author of Before I Go to SleepOut of poverty, brutality and prejudice, Damian Barr builds something riveting, touching and painfully funny. His account of growing up under Thatcher's regime defines the experience of a generation. At once personal and universal, Maggie & Me is a work of stealthy genius -- Maggie O’FarrellA marvellous memoir – wrenching, funny and wise. I loved it! * Joanne Harris *This amazing book tells the story of an appalling childhood with truth and clarity unsmudged by self-pity. It grips from beginning to end and leaves the reader elated at the fact that such experiences can be overcome and produce a man who can write a book so vivid, so unsentimentally forgiving, and so memorable * Diana Athill *This book will break your heart and make you angry; then it will lift your heart and make you glad; because Damian Barr has transmuted a grim childhood into a work of art and brought forth beauty from ashes * Richard Holloway *That Damian Barr survived his childhood is testament to his startling courage and determination.That he was then able to write about the experience with such wit, verve and candour is equally astonishing. Maggie & Me is a cause for celebration on all kinds of levels. Rejoice! * Rupert Thomson *Damian Barr sifts through the wreckage of a horrific childhood and manages to extract humour, generosity of spirit and ultimately joy, and he does it with a literary élan that had me re-reading whole paragraphs, just for the pleasure of it. To say I loved it doesn't begin to convey the mixture of emotions - tears, laughter, anger - I felt while reading it. This book should be required reading for children who need to know that there is life beyond an appalling beginning, and for politicians who prefer to look the other way -- Jojo Moyes author of Me Before YouLike all too few memoirs, in a bloated, me-me age, Maggie & Me ends all too soon. Imagine one of the sharper Mitford sisters cruelly reborn into the family from Shameless and you’ve an idea of the treat in store. Barr tells his engaging, sad-funny story of a camp, bright lad in dire circumstances in Thatcher-era Motherwell in such a beguilingly confiding, arm-linking style, that I felt I'd made a new best friend only to lose them to a world of glittering opportunities. Read this at once before someone films it, as they most surely will -- Patrick GaleThis is the most vital, visceral memoir since Jeanette Winterson’s Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? … Barr’s depiction is so pungent, so earth-shattering it's a universal story of alienation – one for anyone who's ever felt desperate to escape. His childhood, evoked with such cheek-biting tenderness, now seems more real and more Technicolor than my own. I won't be happy until everyone reads this book -- Patrick StrudwickTimely confessional – zestfully observed, sharply written, and sprinkled with more lyricism and humour than a memoir of misery in Motherwell suggests -- Boyd Tonkin * Independent *Maggie & Me is a perfect chip supper of a memoir: nostalgic, tart, crisp and seductive. It's also sad, kind, witty, and sexy. And alarmingly educational -- Louisa YoungBrilliantly observed, searingly intimate and painfully truthful, Maggie & Me brought the eighties back to me at the same time as making me question my established views of the whole decade. In other words, like the very best books, it changed me a little -- Sathnam Sanghera author of The Boy with the Topknot‘A nuanced, subtle and original account ... What could have been a flip idea with no real substance turns out to be a memoir which is both personally moving and a valuable historical document. Barr’s style is conversational, intimate and convincing, and he resists every opportunity to show off. He holds his nerve tackling the unfashionableness of his thesis – that Thatcher inspired even those she seemed to despise – and makes us smile along the way -- Christena Appleyard * Literary Review *Certain memoirs catch a moment and seem to define it, bottle it ... Damian Barr, I suspect, is about to do something of the same with this hugely entertaining book ... Full to the brim with poignancy, humour, brutality and energetic and sometimes shimmering prose, the book confounds one’s assumptions about those years and drenches the whole era in an emotionally charged comic grandeur. It is hugely affecting -- Andrew Holgate * Sunday Times *Beyond his Maggie cult, this memoir can boast a humour, bravery and brio that cross all party lines * Independent *This memoir of deprivation and survival is shrewdly constructed and written with a winning dry humour -- Adam Mars-Jones * Guardian *A brilliant, laugh-out-loud and profoundly moving Eighties memoir * GQ *An inspiring read * Marie Claire *By turns funny, tender, and heartbreaking, it is also a useful primer for anyone too young to remember what life was like in the industrial areas of Britain enduring the changes wrought by Thatcherism... A gifted storyteller, weaving skilfully back and forth through time, and his unfussy prose flows delightfully... Splendid * Independent on Sunday *Hugely affecting memoir * Sunday Times *Unlike most volumes of this kind, Maggie & Me is short on jokes and long on raw, pungent atmosphere. Barr has a keen eye for wincingly evocative detail... Expressed with a kind of grim lyricism * New Statesman *A touching and darkly humorous memoir... Topical and heartfelt * TNT Magazine *Witty, gritty and inspiring * Glamour *Maggie and Me by Damian Barr has a startling new take on the former PM -- Mark Smith * Herald *Comi-tragic memoir * Evening Standard *A refreshing, affecting and ultimately triumphant account -- Ben Felsenburg * Metro *Timely confessional – zestfully observed, sharply written, and sprinkled with more lyricism and humour than a memoir of misery in Motherwell suggests -- Boyd Tonkin * Independent *A real storyline, touching and personal, and I found myself laughing * Mail on Sunday *[A] talented writer ... Barr captures very well how it is possible to learn and to love even in the most unpropitious environment. His book is the better for the strange loyalty it shows to the place he fled * Daily Telegraph *I was dazzled by the energy and verve of Damian Barr’s memoir, Maggie & Me ... I’ve been shoving copies into people’s hands all year -- Johanna Thomas-Corr, Books of the Year * Evening Standard *Damian Barr’s wonderful memoir Maggie & Me … was the coming-of-age story of this year -- Louise Doughty, Books of the Year * Observer *Written with beautiful clarity and no self-pity – I look forward to seeing what he does next -- Stephanie Merritt, Books of the Year * Observer *Damian Barr’s Maggie & Me is easily my favourite book of 2013 ... There isn’t a trace of bitterness in the beautiful book. Only the radiant eloquence of a man whose courage and humanity shine from its pages -- Alan Johnson, Books of the Year * New Statesman *Charming, life-enhancing -- Melanie Reid, Books of the Year * The Times *Barr’s moving, funny, inspiring memoir of growing up gay in Motherwell is a virtuoso piece of autobiography that paints a vivid portrait of our country’s recent past -- Patricia Nicol, Non-fiction Books of the Year * Metro *The surprisingly funny and positive story of growing up gay in a working-class town in Thatcher’s Britain. It’s worth the cover price for the Dirty Dancing scene alone -- Katy Guest, Books of the Year * Independent on Sunday *

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Book SynopsisThe Forging of a Rebel is an unsurpassed account of Spanish history and society from early in the twentieth century through the cataclysmic events of the Spanish Civil War. Arturo Barea's masterpiece charts the author's coming-of-age in a bruised and starkly unequal Spain. These three volumes recount in lively detail Barea's daily experience of his country as it pitched toward disaster: we are taken from his youthful play and rebellion on the streets of Madrid, to his apprenticeship in the business world and to the horrors he witnessed as part of the Spanish army in Morocco during the Rif War. The trilogy culminates in an indelible portrait of the Republican fight against Fascist forces in which the Madrid of Barea's childhood becomes a shell and bullet-strewn warzone. Combining historical sweep and authority with poignant characterization and novelistic detail, The Forging of a Rebel is a towering literary and historical achievement.Trade Review“This is an exceptional book.” —George Orwell, author of Animal Farm and 1984 “One of the great autobiographies of the twentieth century.” —New Republic “One of the most significant Spanish prose works of [the 20th] century . . . Moving and dramatic.” —New York Review of Books “Perhaps the most definitive and personal account of [Spain's] history during the first four decades of the 20th century.” —Guardian “As essential to an understanding of twentieth-century Spain as the reading of Tolstoy is indispensable to the comprehension of nineteenth-century Russia.” —Daily Telegraph

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Book SynopsisOver the last seven years Etgar Keret has had plenty of reasons to worry. His son, Lev, was born in the middle of a terrorist attack in Tel Aviv. His father became ill. And he has been constantly tormented by nightmarish visions of the Iranian president Ahmadinejad, anti-Semitic remarks both real and imagined, and, perhaps most worrisome of all, a dogged telemarketer who seems likely to chase him to the grave. Emerging from these darkly absurd circumstances is a series of funny, tender ruminations on everything from his three-year-old son's impending military service to the terrorist mindset behind Angry Birds. Moving deftly between the personal and the political, the playful and the profound, The Seven Good Years takes a life-affirming look at the human need to find good in the least likely places, and the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of our capricious world.

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Book SynopsisWith an introduction by Olivia Laing Monday 20 April 1925. One thing in considering my state of mind now, seems to me beyond dispute, that I have at last, bored down into my oil well, & can't scribble fast enough to bring it all to the surface... I have never felt this rush & urgency before. Mrs Dalloway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), Orlando (1928), A Room of One's Own (1929) - the years covered by this volume of Virginia Woolf's diary saw the publication of four of her most celebrated works, and the writing of The Waves. Her diary captures the accelerating pace of her life, and the creative friendships with other well-known writers and artists. At times exhilarated, at others fearful or depressed, the entries of these years are animated by Woolf's sheer vitality as a writer.

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Book SynopsisA powerful, personal agenda-changing exploration of poverty in today's Britain.'Totally engrossing and deliciously feisty' Bernardine Evaristo'Staggering... An absolute inspiration' Douglas Stewart, Herald'When every day of your life you have been told you have nothing of value to offer, that you are worth nothing to society, can you ever escape that sense of being 'lowborn' no matter how far you've come?'Kerry Hudson is proudly working class but she was never proudly poor. The poverty she grew up in was all-encompassing, grinding and often dehumanising. Always on the move with her single mother, Kerry attended nine primary schools and five secondaries, living in B&Bs and council flats. She scores eight out of ten on the Adverse Childhood Experiences measure of childhood trauma.Twenty years later, Kerry's life is unrecognisable. She's a prizewinning novelist who has travelled the world. She has a secure home, a loving partner and access to art, music, film and books. But she often finds herself looking over her shoulder, caught somehow between two worlds.Lowborn is Kerry's exploration of where she came from. She revisits the towns she grew up in to try to discover what being poor really means in Britain today and whether anything has changed.'One of the most important books of the year' GuardianTrade ReviewI loved Lowborn... A powerful exploration of Hudson's working-class childhood and its legacy -- David Nicholls, author of One DayHudson's resilience, grace and humility is staggering. She's an absolute inspiration -- Douglas Stewart * Herald *Absolutely beautiful -- Stanley TucciKerry Hudson blew me away, opened my eyes -- Philippa Perry, author of The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read * You're Booked *Compelling, fascinating and well-written, undeniably grim but peppered with humour and tenderness...Hudson demonstrates that only by lifting whole communities out of poverty...can we hope to avoid consigning children and young people like her - vulnerable and blameless - to the worst of lives -- Kit de Waal * Daily Telegraph *Lowborn is in part an indictment of a country that claims to still have a functioning welfare state... Most of all, it is a moving portrait of the survival and eventual flourishing of a remarkable spirit -- John Harris * Guardian *I've been in thrall to the words of Kerry Hudson since reading the very first sentence of her spectacularly good debut novel. I'm so glad she is writing Lowborn. It's an important book that needs to exist and she is exactly the right person to write it. The hideous divisiveness that the horror that is Brexit has both revealed and fuelled, only makes this book more necessary -- Cathy Rentzenbrink, author of THE LAST ACT OF LOVEElegant, compassionate and powerful... tells the hidden story of what it means to be poor in Britain today -- Charlotte Heathcote * Sunday Express *Lowborn is an insider's view of the complexities of modern-day poverty, written with humour and compassion, but without judgement. It should be required reading for anyone who unknowingly believes poverty is a personal choice and that if you work hard enough you'll avoid its fate... a fearless writer, an inspiring woman -- Jackie Annesley * Sunday Times *One of the most important books of the year -- Nikesh Shukla * Guardian *Beautifully written but with emotional hand grenades detonating on almost every page...a breathtaking odyssey -- Stephen McGinty * Sunday Times *Where there are few working-class stories, there are fewer still from working-class women. Lowborn stands out as rare, as well as compassionately and skilfully told… Some books help us understand the world around us. Others do that, and make us feel less alone in it, too. Lowborn is one such book, holding out a hand of friendship to anyone who might pick it up and find something forgotten or familiar among its pages -- Laura Waddell * Scotsman *I wish I’d had access to such honest and relatable work as Hudson’s when I was younger. She proves that successful women can have a working-class story -- Hollie Richardson * Stylist *Hudson has written a moving and readable account of growing up in the poorest section of society. Her book is also a meditation on social mobility… Hudson’s life is proof that a person can, against the odds, make a success of themselves. In Lowborn, she shows us very clearly why so many do not -- James Bloodworth * The Times *Lowborn is the opposite of a misery memoir. The chapters alternate between Hudson's raw memories and accounts of her present-day attempts to confront them. There's warmth and courage as well as pain and ultimately triumph here * New Statesman *

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Book SynopsisHow does a writer compose a suicide note? This was not a question that the prize-winning novelist William Styron had ever contemplated before. In this true account of his depression, Styron describes an illness that reduced him from a successful writer to a man arranging his own destruction. He lived to give us this gripping description of his descent into mental anguish, and his eventual success in overcoming a little-understood yet very common condition.The unabridged text of Darkness Visible by William StyronVINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us humanAlso in the Vintage Minis series:Swimming by Roger DeakinBabies by Anne EnrightCalm by Tim ParksWork by Joseph HellerTrade ReviewAs short as a hangman's rope and nearly as arresting - an essay of great gravity and resonance. Never has Styron used so few words so effectively * Newsweek *Imagine our joy when Vintage announced that it is publishing a collection of easily digestible books from the world’s most celebrated writers on the experiences that make us human… They look good and read well. That’s win/win in our book. * Stylist *

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Book SynopsisCynthia Rogerson’s mother is dying. Often. Travelling between her home in Scotland and California, as she spends time at her mother’s bedside Cynthia recalls her youthful adventures: living in a squat, train-hopping, hitchhiking and all the other things she never told her mother. Wonderfully witty and refreshingly candid, Wah! is an unflinching look at life in all its uncertain and messy glory.Trade Review‘A rich, lyrical text that will show the tears at the heart of things.’I devoured Wah! A delicious memoir from the from the much loved ex director of Moniack MhorEncompasses all the different kinds of love.As poignant as it is hilarious.Witty, rich in revelation, and elegantly written.Wah! is both moving and funny, with a wonderfully light touch - completely charming.A selfie of a tearaway with a real writer in control of the chaos. A wonderful and courageous book.This sparkling memoir is a revelation.Witty, compassionate, playful, scarily honest.Her wisecracks skewer even the bleakest moments.Laugh-aloud funny, poignant, wicked, shallow and profound.

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Book SynopsisSHORTLISTED FOR THE 2024 WOMEN''S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION''Vivid and empowering'' GILLIAN ANDERSON''A stunning book' BERNARDINE EVARISTODazzling' TARA WESTOVERA story about hope, imagination and resilience'GUARDIANAn award-winning, inspiring memoir of family, education and resilience.Born in Montego Bay, Jamaica, where luxury hotels line pristine white sand beaches, Safiya Sinclair grew up guarding herself against an ever-present threat. Her father, a volatile reggae musician and strict believer in a militant sect of Rastafari, railed against Babylon, the corrupting influence of the immoral Western world just beyond their gate. To protect the purity of the women in their family he forbade almost everything.Her mother did what she could to bring joy to her children with books and poetry. But as Safiya's imagination reached beyond its restrictive borders, her burgeoning independence brought with it ever greater clashes with her father. Soon she realised that if she was to live at all, she Trade Review ‘An electrifying memoir’ Observer ‘A story about hope, imagination and resilience’ Guardian ‘Glimmering … laced with poetic voice’ Time ‘A breathless, scorching memoir’ New York Times Book Review ‘Electrifying’ Spectator ‘A stirring account of one woman’s break from the parameters imposed on her’ Elle ‘A narrative marvel … To read it is to believe that words can save’ Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings ‘Unforgettable, mesmerising, heartbreaking and heartwarming … One of the best memoirs in world literature’ Elif Shafak, author of The Island of Missing Trees ‘Sinclair's lush, lyrical language makes everything feel alive’ Raven Leilani, author of Luster ‘Full of courage and poetry … an instant contemporary Caribbean classic’ Monique Roffey, author of The Mermaid of Black Conch ‘Atmospheric and completely absorbing … A fascinating story lushly told’ Diana Evans, author of A House for Alice ‘Essential … Sinclair’s devotion to language has been lifelong, and How to Say Babylon is the result’ Jesmyn Ward, author of Sing, Unburied, Sing ‘Gut-wrenching, soul-stirring, electrifying’ Nicole Dennis-Benn, author of Here Comes the Sun ‘Immersive, imagistic, honest … A quiet testimony, a loud prayer and a large gift’ Raymond Antrobus, author of All the Names Given ‘Destined to become a feminist classic’ Lisa Allen-Agostini, author of The Bread the Devil Knead ‘Heart-warming, tender and fierce’ Lily Dunn, author of Sins of My Father ‘Beautifully rendered and an incredible story’ Natasha Trethewey, author of Memorial Drive ‘A story with radiant transformative power. I couldn’t put it down’ Nadia Osuwu, author of Aftershocks ‘Stunning’ Imani Perry, author of South to America

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Book SynopsisIn The Torch in My Ear Elias Canetti, Nobel Prize winner, towering intellectual figure and polymath, gives us his second volume of autobiography. Using as a framework his admiration for his first great mentor, the Viennese writer Karl Kraus, and his passion for his first wife, Veza, Canetti seamlessly incorporates a profoundly perceptive portrait of Vienna and Berlin in the 1920s. Here are the voices of Brecht, Isaac Babel, George Grosz, and many others. This is autobiography redefining itself.

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Book SynopsisPublished posthumously in 1964, A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway''s most beloved works. Since Hemingway''s personal papers were released in 1979, scholars have examined and debated the changes made to the text before publication. Now this new special restored edition presents the original manuscript as the author prepared it to be published. Featuring a personal foreword by Patrick Hemingway, Ernest''s sole surviving son, and an introduction by the editor and grandson of the author, Seán Hemingway, this new edition also includes a number of unfinished, never-before-published Paris sketches revealing experiences that Hemingway had with his son Jack and his first wife, Hadley. Also included are irreverent portraits of other luminaries, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ford Madox Ford, and insightful recollections of his own early experiments with his craft. Sure to excite critics and readers alike, the restored edition of A Moveable Feast b

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Book Synopsis*Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2020**Winner of non-fiction book of the year at the Irish Book Awards*An extraordinarily intimate book of essays that chart the experiences that have made Sinéad Gleeson the woman and the writer she is today, for readers of The Last Act of Love and I Am, I Am, I Am.'Utterly magnificent. Raw, thought-provoking and galvanising; this is a book every woman should read.' – Eimear McBride, author of A Girl Is a Half-formed Thing.I have come to think of all the metal in my body as artificial stars, glistening beneath the skin, a constellation of old and new metal. A map, a tracing of connections and a guide to looking at things from different angles. How do you tell the story of a life in a body, as it goes through sickness, health, motherhood? How do you tell that story when you are not just a woman but a woman in Ireland? In the powerful and daring essays in Constellations Sinéad Gleeson does that very thing. All of life is within these pages, from birth to first love, pregnancy to motherhood, terrifying sickness, old age and loss to death itself.Throughout this wide-ranging collection she also turns her restless eye outwards delving into work, art and our very ways of seeing. In the tradition of some of our finest life writers, and yet still in her own spirited, generous voice, Sinéad takes us on a journey that is both uniquely personal and yet universal in its resonance. Here is the fierce joy and pain of being alive.'Breathtaking and sublime.' – Nina Stibbe'Absolutely extraordinary and life-enhancing.' – Daisy Buchanan, author of How to be Grown-up.Trade ReviewOutstanding . . . wide-ranging, intimate and expressive . . . it's clear that Gleeson's insight is hard-won, and that, like the women who inspire her, she has found a way to transmute her experience into something powerful that demands to be heard. * Observer *Utterly magnificent. Raw, thought-provoking and galvanising; this is a book every woman should read. -- Eimear McBride, author of A Girl Is a Half-formed ThingSinéad Gleeson has written one of those rare things, a wise and compassionate book full of truth and humility. There are universal themes here; love, the strength of women, survival against the odds. Beautiful prose, poetry and history woven together to make this a must-read and a masterpiece. -- Kit De Waal, author of My Name Is LeonConstellations is glitteringly brilliant . . . Political, poetic, tender and angry, a remarkable book and an astonishing debut. -- Robert Macfarlane, author of The Lost WordsExceptional . . . Bell-clear and immaculately hewn throughout . . . Like Olivia Laing's The Lonely City, this balance between intellect and humanity is what matters . . . besides entertainment and enlightenment, we need writing in our lives that reaches into us and has the potential to leave what's there a little better than it found it. * Irish Independent *Sinéad Gleeson has changed the Irish literary landscape, through her advocacy for the female voice. In Constellations, we finally hear her own voice, and it comes from the blood and bones of her body’s history. Sinéad Gleeson is an absolute force: if you want to know where passion and tenacity are born, read this book. -- Anne EnrightMoving, insightful, beautiful essays about health, art, gender, parenthood, bereavement, the body and her own struggles. * Irish Times *An absolutely astonishing, brilliant and beautiful book. -- Kate Mosse, author of The Burning ChambersBreathtaking and sublime. -- Nina Stibbe, author of Love, NinaThe most beautiful and brilliant book - gorgeous, furious, powerful, tender, funny, compassionate and shockingly wise. Sinéad Gleeson writes with such dazzling talent and vivid insight. Constellations is one of those rare magical books and I feel truly nourished by it. Absolutely extraordinary and life-enhancing. -- Daisy Buchanan, author of How to Be a Grown UpAn absolutely astonishing, brilliant and beautiful book. -- Kate Mosse, author of The Burning ChambersConstellations is an extraordinary piece of writing - beautiful, life affirming, and full of heart -- Louise O’ Neill, author of Asking For ItNimbly written, balletic in style, heartfelt, spirited and thoughtful, Sinéad Gleeson's Constellations is a powerful, inspiring gift to readers everywhere. -- Jami Attenberg, author of All Grown UpConstellations is a truly beautiful book; about the tremendous confines of the body, struck through with almost everything else in the universe, from songs to stars. -- Sara Baume, author of Spill Simmer Falter WitherGleeson moves nimbly, within and between individual essays, from the minutiae of the personal to the broad sweep of culture, history and politics . . . The result is taut but unforced, textured and various. * Financial Times *Sinéad Gleeson’s essay collection brings together passionate, transcendent essays about bodies and art, ghosts and womanhood, grief and motherhood, and what it’s like to live in a body that fails you. Like the perfect title indicates, this is a glistening ensemble of pieces that live on their own but, all together, form a powerful emotional universe. * Elle *In Constellations, Sinead Gleeson, maps the human body and the the human condition in all its triumphs and failures, leaving us with hope and survival. Her writing is startlingly good and fiercely intelligent, her research is forensic and the result is a gift to readers everywhere. -- Liz Nugent, author of Skin DeepGleeson’s writing is honest and moving and delves deep into personal experiences of sickness, health and motherhood. * Lit Hub *

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Book SynopsisGet comfortable, sink under the covers and dip into the hilarious Under the Duvet: Deluxe Edition for a behind-the-scenes glimpse into bestselling author Marian Keyes'' life . . .''A must-read for all. Keyes'' funny and poignant tales will have you chuckling'' Heat________''Let''s get one thing straight: I''m not an outdoorsy type. If I was offered the choice between white-water rafting and being savaged by a rabid dog, I''d be likely to tick the box marked dog''Under the Duvet brings together Marian Keyes'' unputdownable and utterly irresistible journalism and musings on life.Whether it''s shopping, travel, feminism or fashion, Marian takes us on a riotous anecdote-packed journey into her weird and wonderful world.There are adventures with fake tan, love affairs with shoes and nail varnish, and, as a special treat, she includes seven of her hard-to-find (and, she tells us, harder to write) short stories.Trade ReviewPraise for Marian Keyes * - *Gloriously funny * The Sunday Times *A total triumph * Daily Mail *Not only is it a great story with funny, loveable characters, it made me laugh out loud * Stylist *Funny but poignant * Marie Claire *

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Book Synopsis'Evocative . . . poignant . . . acute and funny' Observer'The Revival of the Great Lucia Berlin Continues Apace' New York TimesBest known for her short fiction, it was upon publication of A Manual for Cleaning Women in 2015 that Lucia Berlin’s status as a great American writer was widely celebrated. To populate her stories – the places, relationships, the sentiments – Berlin often drew on her own rich, itinerant life. Before Berlin died, she was working on a book of previously unpublished autobiographical sketches called Welcome Home. The work consisted of more than twenty chapters that started in 1936 in Alaska and ended (prematurely) in 1966 in southern Mexico. In our publication of Welcome Home, her son Jeff Berlin is filling in the gaps with photos and letters from her eventful, romantic, and tragic life.From Alaska to Argentina, Kentucky to Mexico, New York City to Chile, Berlin’s world was wide. And the writing here is, as we’ve come to expect, dazzling. She describes the places she lived and the people she knew with all the style and wit and heart and humour that readers fell in love with in her stories.Trade ReviewA beauty inside and out. -- Chris Power, author of MothersA jigsaw-puzzle portrait of a long-neglected literary legend, baring the autobiographical material that filtered so forcefully into her fiction. The mystery of her fiction is not, it turns out, in the source of its inspiration. It is in how Berlin transformed her life into art that is as vital as the thing itself. * Vogue *Welcome Home comes sadly in fragments only . . . But everything that elevates her short fiction to the peaks of greatness is evident too in the pages documenting her peripatetic early life and her many trials. Her sentences have a smokiness and sad glamour to them; she evokes the many places of her life so memorably, so bluesily. -- Kevin Barry * Irish Times *Welcome Home gives a sense of the joyousness of [Berlin’s] personality, which is as urgently expressed in all her writing as loneliness and desperation are. Her writing loves the world, lingers over details of touch and smell. * Atlantic *An essential companion to her fiction . . . for all the upheaval they depict, the vignettes in Welcome Home are never depressing. They have too many of the appealing and funny qualities of her stories for that, from eye-catching description . . . to a knack for the absurd. -- John Self * Irish Times *Tantalizing glimpses into the life of a recently-discovered writer . . . Berlin describes each home [where she lived] in exquisite, imagistic language . . . [Welcome Home is] an excellent start to understanding a writer and her work. * Kirkus reviews *[In Welcome Home,] Berlin’s self-reflective and candid voice comes roaring through. * Publishers Weekly (starred review) *[Berlin] writes candidly about what she enjoyed and endured; when her narrative peters out in mid-sentence, she leaves her reader wanting more . . . When the words flowed, Berlin managed to perform small miracles with them. Whether describing lucky breaks or hard knocks, her prose is intense and intimate, at once disconcerting and entrancing. * Economist *The more extended memories offered in Welcome Home delight and illuminate . . . Her impressions of her childhood in particular have the vividness of cherished old magazines . . . Lifting the language throughout is an elegant shrug of fatalism, a conviction that we are born exactly what we are, and what we are going to be. -- Patricia Lockwood * London Review of Books *This never-before-published memoir and new collection are cause for jubilation. In part because they make it clear Berlin's gifts were vast, complex, and full of tonal warmths . . . Like Chekhov, Berlin was a beautiful framer of stories. * Boston Globe *Berlin’s nonfiction makes apparent her genius for taking personal, idiosyncratic scenes from her memory and crafting them into fiction that speaks to us all. We come to understand through Welcome Home that Berlin’s fiction has catalyzed her memories into pointed, surprising short stories. Berlin converts memory into fiction, using fiction to revisit and revise memory. * The Washington Post *A collection of autobiographical pieces that reflect Berlin's singularly peripatetic life . . . As is the case with her fiction, Berlin's pieces here are as faceted as the brightest diamond, but rather than blind you, they just encourage you to examine them even more closely, so you get lost in their depths. * NYLON *There’s a delicious pleasure in tracing the nonfictional origins of Berlin’s fictions. * Los Angeles Times *Finding all the connections to the stories in the memoir is fun. The letters, the earliest written at age 11 and most in the author's mid-to-late 20s, offer some of that same pleasure but more powerfully underline the fact that the voice that seems so off-the-cuff and natural in the stories is something she consciously created; the version of her persona and her life that got into the stories is clarified and curated. * Newsday *Berlin is also known as a visionary who anticipated the merging of autobiography and fiction that’s so common right now. You can see just how much she merged her life and her fiction in the unfinished memoir Welcome Home . . . She’s so mordant here, and so observational, and there are so many gorgeous details that must have been painstakingly sifted out of a lifetime of experiences. * Lit Hub *

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Book Synopsis''I took it: - and in an hour, oh! Heavens! what a revulsion! what an upheaving, from its lowest depths, of the inner spirit! what an apocalypse of the world within me!''Thomas De Quincey''s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1821) launched a fascination with drug use and abuse that has continued from his day to ours. In the Confessions De Quincey invents recreational drug taking, but he also details both the lurid nightmares that beset him in the depths of his addiction as well as his humiliatingly futile attempts to renounce the drug. Suspiria de Profundis centres on the deep afflictions of De Quincey''s childhood, and examines the powerful and often paradoxical relationship between drugs and human creativity. In ''The English Mail-Coach'', the tragedies of De Quincey''s past are played out with horrifying repetitiveness against a backdrop of Britain as a Protestant and an imperial power.This edition presents De Quincey''s finest essays in impassioned autobiography, together with three appendices that are highlighted by a wealth of manuscript material related to the three main texts. ABOUT THE SERIES: For over 100 years Oxford World''s Classics has made available the widest range of literature from around the globe. Each affordable volume reflects Oxford''s commitment to scholarship, providing the most accurate text plus a wealth of other valuable features, including expert introductions by leading authorities, helpful notes to clarify the text, up-to-date bibliographies for further study, and much more.Table of ContentsIntroduction ; Note on the Text ; Select Bibliography ; A Chronology of Thomas De Quincey ; Confessions of an English Opium-Eater ; Suspiria de Profundis ; The English Mail-Coach ; Appendix A. Manuscript and Other Material relating to Confessions of an English Opium-Eater ; Appendix B. Manuscript Material relating to Suspiria de Profundis ; Appendix C: Manuscript and Other Material relating to 'The English Mail-Coach' ; Explanatory Notes

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Book SynopsisAfter The Second World War, the author was exiled for many years from his home country of Poland. In this book, he evokes that homeland and his years away from it; how it nurtured him and how its divisions and destruction shaped a generation.

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Book SynopsisA searing account of George Orwell''s observations of working-class life in the bleak industrial heartlands of Yorkshire and Lancashire in the 1930s, The Road to Wigan Pier is a brilliant and bitter polemic that has lost none of its political impact over time. His graphically unforgettable descriptions of social injustice, cramped slum housing, dangerous mining conditions, squalor, hunger and growing unemployment are written with unblinking honesty, fury and great humanity. It crystallized the ideas that would be found in Orwell''s later works and novels, and remains a powerful portrait of poverty, injustice and class divisions in Britain.Published with an introduction by Richard Hoggart in Penguin Modern Classics.''It is easy to see why the book created and still creates so sharp an impact ... exceptional immediacy, freshness and vigour, opinionated and bold ... Above all, it is a study of poverty and, behind that, of the strength of class-divisTrade ReviewTrue genius ... all his anger and frustration found their first proper means of expression in Wigan Pier -- Peter Ackroyd * The Times *

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Book SynopsisTHE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLING MEMOIR OF SPY-WRITING LEGEND JOHN LE CARRÉ*NOW A MAJOR APPLE TV MOTION PICTURE*''As recognizable a writer as Dickens or Austen'' Financial TimesFrom his years serving in British Intelligence during the Cold War to a career as a writer, John le Carré has lived a unique life.In this, his first memoir, le Carré is as funny as he is incisive - reading into the events he witnesses the same moral ambiguity with which he imbues his novels. Whether he''s interviewing a German terrorist in her desert prison or watching Alec Guinness preparing for his role as George Smiley, this book invites us to think anew about events and people we believed we understood.Best of all, le Carré gives us a glimpse of a writer''s journey over more than six decades, and his own hunt for the human spark that has given so much life and heart to his fictional characters.''No other writer has charted - pitilessly for politicians but thrillingly for readers - the public and secret histories of his times'' Guardian''When I was under house arrest I was helped by the books of John le Carré . . . These were the journeys that made me feel that I was not really cut off from the rest of humankind'' Aung San Suu KyiTrade ReviewFascinating, important, pithy. Anyone interested in le Carré and his significant contribution to the literature of the 20th and 21st centuries will want to read these engaging meanderings through his life and career.He has plenty to say about Kim Philby, the movie business, fellow spooks and Russian defectors, encounters with the great and good, and his intrepid travels to research his novels -- William Boyd * Guardian *Vintage le Carré ... [he] remains a magician of plot and counter-plot, a master storyteller * Observer *John le Carré is as recognizable a writer as Dickens or Austen * Financial Times *When I was under house arrest I was helped by the books of John le Carré ... they were a journey into the wider world ... These were the journeys that made me feel that I was not really cut off from the rest of humankind * Aung San Suu Kyi *No other writer has charted - pitilessly for politicians but thrillingly for readers - the public and secret histories of his times * Guardian *A smashing read -- Richard Davenport-Hines * Wall Street Journal *Offers thrills of recognition as le Carré's archetypes spring to life... The 84-year old novelist discards extended narrative and writes in elegiac fragments with linking harmonies, like the late works of that other German Romantic, Beethoven -- John Gapper * Financial Times *Exceptionally well-turned and enjoyable -- David Sexton * Evening Standard *Grippingly written, it is revealing in ways the author never intended it to be * Sunday Telegraph *Cagey, clever, revealing * Daily Telegraph *le Carré is a master of the art... fascinatingly readable * The Times *Frank and fascinating * Daily Express *The Pigeon Tunnel is a delight... a collection of highly polishes oddments from a life, assembled to entertain and inform...fabulously funny * Radio Times *A snapshot of a story that is, truly, as extraordinary as any of his fiction * Daily Mail *For me The Pigeon Tunnel just confirms the enigma... extremely humorous... at no point do I feel that I knew one tiny bit more than he wants me to know -- Susanne Bier, director of The Night ManagerHe has written an uproarious, darkly poignant and precious book -- James Naughtie * New Statesman *A beautiful book. The great glory of it is it comes close to unlocking the central mystery of le Carré -- Tony ParsonsAs enthralling as his fiction * Woman and Home *Le Carré is such a good writer . . . Though urbane and detached, there is rage simmering not far below the surface of both le Carré and his new book. But then, nothing, absolutely nothing, is what it seems * Daily Mail *A deeply personal and touching account of le Carré's life ... it has undeniable power * Prospect *Explosive * Daily Mail *le Carré's The Pigeon Tunnel is exquisite -- Hugh LaurieI savoured the gravelly, quietly insistent voice of a master storyteller examining his own life -- Michela Wrong * The Spectator *the entertaining recollections of a raconteur -- Neil McCormick * Telegraph *Elusive and frank and witty by turns, the spy master gives away just as much of himself as he wants to in The Pigeon Tunnel, tracing the story of his life through his walk-on parts in the history and mythology of the cold war, and the shape-shifting discipline of his imagination -- Tim Adams * Guardian Biographies of the Year *

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Book SynopsisThe National Book Award–winning author of Year of the Monkey, Just Kids, and M Train offers a rare, intimate account of her own creative processTrade Review“Devotion is short enough to devour at one enjoyable sitting and thought-provoking enough to deserve re-reading. . . . It’s a privilege to spend any time with Patti Smith, however brief.”—Suzi Feay, Financial Times“A triptych of compact, heartfelt essays on discovery, solitude and writing.”—Darragh McManus, Irish Independent“By turns allegorical, metaphysical, fictional and factual, Devotion shows rather than tells what it means to give a life to writing. A master of poetic innovation, Smith takes her style to the next level in this slim volume.”—Katherine Cooper, Hyperallergic

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Book SynopsisThe second instalment of his famed unreliable memoirs, Falling Towards England sees Clive James set sail for London – a long way from the acclaimed author, poet and broadcaster he would one day become . . .'A comic triumph' – Ian Hamilton, London Review of BooksWaving goodbye to Sydney, Clive James arrives in 1960s England with nothing much besides the clothes on his back, in search of fame and fortune. Idealistic and uncompromising, if short on cash, he plans to get a low-paying menial job by day and compose poetical masterpieces by night. London is beginning to swing, but our hero is flat broke. The menial job proves elusive, with steady employment as hard to find as a room of his own.In a succession of more or less unsatisfactory digs, which include a bedsit, a barge, and a large paper bag, he attempts to stay warm, knuckle down, practise the Twist, plan those poetical masterpieces and improve his unsatisfactory warTrade ReviewA comic triumph, full of terrific jokes and brilliantly sustained setpieces. -- Ian Hamilton * London Review of Books *James’ wickedly funny jokes and jibes make you laugh out loud and feel warm to the man. No wonder women wanted to feed him greens, and men lend him money. * The Times *

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Book Synopsis''In the beginning, everything was alive. The smallest objects were endowed with beating hearts . . .''Having recalled his life through the story of his physical self in Winter Journal, internationally best-selling novelist Paul Auster now remembers the experience of his development from within, through the encounters of his interior self with the outer world, as well as through a selection of the revealing letters he sent to his first wife, acclaimed author Lydia Davis.An impressionistic portrait of a writer coming of age, Report from the Interior moves from Auster''s baby''s-eye view of the man in the moon to his childhood worship of the movie cowboy Buster Crabbe to the composition of his first poem at the age of nine to his dawning awareness of the injustices of American life. Report from the Interior charts Auster''s moral, political and intellectual journey as he inches his way toward adulthood through the post-war fifties and into t

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Book SynopsisVirginia Woolf was born in London in 1882, the daughter of Sir Leslie Stephen, first editor of The Dictionary of National Biography. After his death in 1904 Virginia and her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell, moved to Bloomsbury and became the centre of 'The Bloomsbury Group'. This informal collective of artists and writers which included Lytton Strachey and Roger Fry, exerted a powerful influence over early twentieth-century British culture. In 1912 Virginia married Leonard Woolf, a writer and social reformer. Three years later, her first novel The Voyage Out was published, followed by Night and Day (1919) and Jacob's Room (1922). These first novels show the development of Virginia Woolf's distinctive and innovative narrative style. It was during this time that she and Leonard Woolf founded The Hogarth Press with the publication of the co-authored Two Stories in 1917, hand-printed in the dining room of their house in Surrey. BetweenTrade ReviewOne might think, from the heaps of books, that the bones of Bloomsbury had been by now well and truly disinterred...But one would be wrong, for Moments of Being is a real delight -- Jan Marsh * Daily Telegraph *Of fascinating importance, because they are Virginia's only known autobiographical writings -- John Lehmann * Sunday Telegraph *The book must appeal to anyone interested in Virginia Woolf and her circle -- Derek Parker * The Times *Her manner of recall contains all those surprises and felicities of language we have come to expect when she writes, as it were, with her elbows on the table -- Richard Shone * Spectator *

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Book Synopsis''A delight . . . a glorious, witty and life-affirming ragbag of autobiography, cultural commentary and hard-won wisdom.'' ANDREW TAYLOR, author of The Shadows of London''Perceptive, wise and illuminating . . . an unmissable farewell.'' Barry Forshaw, FINANCIAL TIMES''The most hilarious, life-affirming book you'll read this year.'' SAGA magazine''Wit and wisdom that make every page turn . . . what a fine talent the world has lost.'' STARBURSTThis is the memoir Christopher Fowler always wanted to write about ''writing''.It''s the story of how a young bookworm growing up in a house where there was nothing to read but knitting pamphlets and motorcycle manuals became a writer - a ''word monkey'' - and pursued a sort of career in popular fiction. And it''s a book full of brilliant insights into the pleasures and pitfalls of his profession, dos and don''ts for would-be writTrade ReviewClever, wise, heartbreaking and yet also life-affirmingly funny: his literary comic lightness of touch is on a par with Wodehouse. -- JOANNE HARRIS, bestselling author of Broken Light and ChocolatA delight to read - a glorious, witty and life-affirming ragbag of autobiography, cultural commentary and hard-won wisdom about the strange and miraculous craft of writing. It's the sort of book that makes you want to underline every other sentence. Beautifully written, of course - one would expect no less from Chris - and characterised by its complete lack of self-pity. I hope it sells by the truckload. -- ANDREW TAYLOR, bestselling author of The Shadows of LondonA delight: perceptive, wise and illuminating on the act of reading (no genre held terrors for him) and, equally, the act of writing. All of this in a book full of disarmingly sardonic gallows humour about his own impending death. An unmissable farewell from the much missed author. -- Barry Forshaw * FINANCIAL TIMES *A remarkable book by a remarkable writer: amazingly entertaining and informative and also, for obvious reasons, one of the most moving. -- SIMON MASON, author of the DI Wilkins MysteriesNot a hint of Pollyanna here, just the most hilarious, life-affirming book you’ll read this year. * SAGA magazine *

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Book SynopsisI''m not on my own because I''ve been sitting crying into a handkerchief or apron over a lack of interested men. I''ve been made every offer imaginable over the years. Men offer themselves, their sons . . . drunk fathers sometimes call me up and say things like: ''Do you need a farmhand?'' ''I can lift the hay bales'' ''I can repair your tractors''. . .Heida is a solitary farmer with a flock of 500 sheep in a remorseless area bordering Iceland''s highlands. It''s known as the End of the World. One of her nearest neighbors is Iceland''s most notorious volcano, Katla, which has periodically driven away the inhabitants of Ljótarstaoir ever since people first started farming there in the twelfth century. This portrait of Heida written with wit and humor by one of Iceland''s most acclaimed novelists, Steinunn Siguroardóttir, tells a heroic tale of a charismatic young woman, who walked away from a career as a model to take over the family farm at the age ofTrade ReviewHeida is a force of nature . . . she has about her an honesty that is never less than enchanting * Sunday Times *A fierce account of what it means to hold the countryside in trust . . . [Heida is an] utterly charming personality . . . this is an inspiring story of resistance to a corporate Goliath, and [Heida] - with her forthright tone and irrepressible humour - makes a delightful David * Mail on Sunday *I had the feeling while reading it that Heida was in MY kitchen, idly chatting to ME and that I was getting to know her really well, as a close friend . . . It was a privilege to be 'talked to' as a friend and allowed to share a fine farmer's life for a few hours * Rosamund Young, author of THE SECRET LIVES OF COWS *A rare portrait of a woman possessed of frontier courage and a sense of humour and humility . . . revelatory and inspiring * The Herald *Heida comes across as a highly impressive person . . . Iceland is lucky to have this formidable guardian angel protecting its traditions and landscape * Daily Mail *Sharp and funny . . . this is an engrossing quick dispatch from an unusual life * The Riverside Way (The Riverside Bookshop blog) *What a story . . . a real-life Bathsheba from Far From the Madding Crowd, but undistracted by the endless queue of male suitors . . . this frank, unusual book details a year in her life * Muddy Stilettos *An engaging memoir . . . a beautifully written ode * Countryman *A study in courage and determination * TLS *It is her deep connectedness to others - whether her family, her farmer neighbours, her dog, or the land itself - which drives the emotional heart of the book * Church Times *

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Book SynopsisThe No.3 Sunday Times bestselling 'masterpiece' (Andrew O'Hagan)Trade ReviewSearching, truthful, shocking (and timely) . . . with a reporter's skill, she shows the interior life of her people. In the present climate, this book should be given out on the NHS . . . a masterpiece -- Andrew O'Hagan * GUARDIAN *Sharply intelligent and utterly unsentimental, MOTHERWELL is a fitting legacy left by a blazing talent * OBSERVER *Raw, compelling, wise and tender -- DOLLY ALDERTONMOTHERWELL is razor-sharp, fearless and wonderful -- ADAM KAYAn outstanding memoir . . . The writing is powerful and muscular; the bitterness raw and furious . . . as a legacy, this book will stand at least as long as Ravenscraig * SPECTATOR *A fierce and tender reckoning: personal, political, and blazing with truth -- MELISSA HARRISONCrammed with wit and intelligence . . . a clever, meticulous and intricate work. Although heart-rending at times, it is also surprisingly funny . . . has a generosity of tone that means as you read it you experience sudden flashes from your own past: slights, plights, triumphs, mad asides * THE FINANCIAL TIMES *Utterly candid and staggeringly good, both as the history of a woman and the history of a place -- INDIA KNIGHTA poignant, beautiful and all-too-topical memoir. With the skill, delicacy and sharp wit her many fans know and love, Deborah Orr tells her tale of childhood: of class and mobility, of self-love and self-loathing, of dissatisfied mother and clever daughter, and of the dangerous, complex sacrifices which opportunity demands from a girl on the move in the late twentieth century. Are you a mother? Do/did you have a mother? Read it -- LOUISA YOUNGIf you have or had a difficult mother this is the book for you. Difficult doesn't have to mean abusive. You can have a happy childhood with a mother who drives you mad -- LINDA GRANTFilled with observational brilliance and wit . . . beautiful. Brilliant . . . not just an intelligent and honest personal memoir, not just an examination of narcissism, interdependence and repression, but a conjuring of a time, a moment in British history, that may otherwise be lost entirely. It is also funny. As funny, it would seem from the obituaries, as the woman herself * DAILY TELEGRAPH *Honest, at times harsh, but also deeply tender and very funny - this is a beautifully written memoir. It's my generation so evoked many unwanted memories including the three-day-week, boiled to death veg and masturbating skinheads. A great read for 'Common People' like me -- KATHY BURKEMOTHERWELL is a story about a girl, a family, a time, a place. But so much more. Fearlessly Deborah Orr works out how she was formed as she unpicks everyday dysfunction. Full of glinting pain, brilliant one liners and utter clarity, the sliver of ice in her heart melts. Sheer humanity shines out. I was astonished -- SUZANNE MOOREDeborah's honest and fearless spirit shines throughout MOTHERWELL. Her many struggles are told with wit and candour, but above all there is so much love in this book -- COSEY FANNI TUTTIComplex and moving, this is an honest take on the close ties that can bind, hold us back and also set us free * STYLIST - Best New Books of 2020 *[Orr's] masterpiece . . . the story of her family but also a social commentary of Britain . . . a fascinating look into the childhood of one of our most important journalists * EVENING STANDARD *Intense and moving * RED *A remarkable memoir, the candour of it . . . Having grown up working-class in Scotland, there are a lot of resonances * THE i NEWSPAPER *Love and understanding triumph over the difficult and painful memories. It is disconcertingly honest and self-revealing. You are unlikely to forget it * THE SCOTSMAN *A complex study of a family, childhood, and a town transformed * THE ARTS DESK *Brilliant . . . An excellent and timely slice of social reportage * METRO *A beautifully written portrait of a quintessential Seventies working-class childhood * NEW STATESMAN *Bold, clear-eyed and often very funny * RADIO TIMES *A remarkable book . . . impassioned, angry, tender, pathetic, honest to a fault. MOTHERWELL is written at such a pitch of intensity you sometimes have to put it down just to get your breath back * MAIL ON SUNDAY *Searing, candid, magnificently perceptive and lingeringly tragic. A modern classic * DAILY MAIL *Vivid, visceral, uncompromising, electrifying in its candour * i *Raw, beautiful and truly insightful * GOOD HOUSEKEEPING *Completely amazing * STYLIST *MOTHERWELL is an unflinching memoir of one family and a lost world. It is also an extended essay on how not to mother well and the terrible legacy that can leave * DAILY EXPRESS *Sharp, funny, warm and memorable * SUNDAY INDEPENDENT *Dauntless, quietly devastating, but not without seams of happiness and magnificent wit * THE HERALD (Glasgow) *

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Book SynopsisAmanda Prowse has built a bestselling career on the lives of fictional women. Now she turns the pen on her own life. I guess the first question to ask is, what kind of woman am I? Well, you know those women who saunter into a room, immaculately coiffed and primped from head to toe? If you look behind her, you’ll see me. From her childhood, where there was no blueprint for success, to building a career as a bestselling novelist against all odds, Amanda Prowse explores what it means to be a woman in a world where popularity, slimness, beauty and youth are currency—and how she overcame all of that to forge her own path to happiness. Sometimes heartbreaking, often hilarious and always entirely relatable, Prowse details her early struggles with self-esteem and how she coped with the frustrating expectations others had of how she should live. Most poignantly, she delves into her toxic relationship with food, the hardest addiction she has ever known, and how she journeyed out the other side. One of the most candid memoirs you’re ever likely to read, Women Like Us provides welcome insight into how it is possible—against the odds—to overcome insecurity, body consciousness and the ubiquitous imposter syndrome to find happiness and success, from a woman who’s done it all, and then some.Trade Review“In this immensely inspiring work, British novelist Prowse (What Have I Done?) reflects on the bodily struggles that bled into her successful writing career…Told with clarity and vulnerability, Prowse’s story of overcoming cultural norms to accept herself arrives as a much-needed corrective in an age of filtered beauty.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Prowse’s writing is candid and charming, and many of her stories will resonate with her readers.”—Booklist

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Book SynopsisWith an introduction by Adam Phillips Monday 17 July 1922. Back from Garsington, & too unsettled to write - I meant to say read; but then this does not count as writing. It is to me like scratching; or, if it goes well, like having a bath - which of course, I did not get at Garsington. 1920. The war is over, and Virginia Woolf is meeting friends old and new, from Maynard Keynes to Vita Sackville-West. She is reading and reviewing voraciously, and the Hogarth Press is thriving. Jacob's Room was published in 1922, and Woolf began work on what was to become Mrs Dalloway. This was a time of creative highs and lows, as well as a growing confidence as Woolf developed her distinctive literary voice.

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Book Synopsis'I drew my first breath on the 28th of January 1935, which was quite a good time for a future writer to be born in England...’ The only child in a lower-middle-class London family, David Lodge inherited his artistic genes from his musician father and his Catholic faith from his Irish-Belgian mother. Four years old when World War II began, David grew to maturity through decades of great social and cultural change - giving him plenty to write about. Candid, witty and insightful, Quite a Good Time to be Born illuminates a period of transition in British society, and charts the evolution of a writer whose works have become classics in his own lifetime.Trade ReviewWhat one takes away from this half-memoir is the self-portrait of an extraordinarily good, wrongly modest man; a distinguished scholar, and one of the finest of current novelists -- John Sutherland * Spectator *As a piece of reportage from the third quarter of the English 20th century this is a sociologist’s paradise * Guardian *An outstanding memoir... Lucid and witty * Irish Times *A fascinating and moving read * Financial Times *Quite a Good Time to be Born is a record of success, free of boasting or malice. Anyone with some knowledge of academia or the literary world will find it full of interest -- Allan Massie * Scotsman *

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Book SynopsisWhen it comes to death, is there ever a best case scenario? In this disarmingly witty book, Julian Barnes confronts our unending obsession with the end. He reflects on what it means to miss God, whether death can be good for our careers and why we eventually turn into our parents. Barnes is the perfect guide to the weirdness of the only thing that binds us all.Selected from the book Nothing to be Frightened Of by Julian BarnesVINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS.A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us humanAlso in the Vintage Minis series:Calm by Tim ParksDrinking by John CheeverBabies by Anne EnrightPsychedelics by Aldous HuxleyTrade ReviewBoth fun and funny. It is sharp too, in the sense of painful as well as witty... Barnes dissects with tremendous verve and insight this awesome inevitability of death and its impact on the human psyche. He also tears at your heart * New Statesman *Imagine our joy when Vintage announced that it is publishing a collection of easily digestible books from the world’s most celebrated writers on the experiences that make us human… They look good and read well. That’s win/win in our book. * Stylist *

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Book SynopsisFirst distributed in 1913, John Barleycorn is the principal keen abstract composition on liquor in American writing. London offers intense speculations on Barleycorn along with his very own nearby story drinking vocation, which was chivalrous in scale. It is, notwithstanding, as a practice in life account that his book chiefly draws in the advanced peruser. London's life was unfortunately short however loaded with episode and experience. In John Barleycorn he keeps his initial difficulties in Oakland, his encounters as clam privateer, remote ocean sealer, homeless person, Yukon goldminer, understudy, nonconformist, and - eventually - top of the line creator. Long ignored by London hardliners (who wish he had never composed it) and utilized against him by pundits who might see him as a self-admitted inebriated, John Barleycorn should be commended for what it is: an exemplary of American life account.

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Book SynopsisAt Amanda Hess''s seven-month scan, the doctor analysing the ultrasound saw something he ''didn''t like'' - a potentially serious abnormality in her baby. Telling the moving story of this moment and everything that happened afterwards, Amanda Hess explores how it feels to become a parent in a culture in which everything is mediated by the internet and technology, in which the click of a mouse can conjure infinite information at any time - along with infinite opinions, suggestions and judgements. Exploring the outer reaches of different approaches to parenthood - from genetic testing and the pursuit of ''a normal baby'' to freebirthers'' refusal of any medical care or intervention into pregnancy - she explores compelling questions about how technology is changing culture, our relationships and our most fundamental human experiences. At the heart of the book is her own deeply emotional story - told in brilliantly stylish prose, alive with sharp insight and wry humour.

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Book SynopsisSomething extraordinary happened to the UK literary scene in the 1980s. In the space of eight years, a generation of young British writers took the literary novel into new realms of setting, subject matter and style, challenging - and almost eclipsing - the Establishment writers of the 1950s. It began with two names - Martin Amis and Ian McEwan - and became a flood: Julian Barnes, William Boyd, Graham Swift, Salman Rushdie, Jeanette Winterson and Pat Barker among them. The rise of the newcomers coincided with astonishing changes in the way books were published - and the ways in which readers bought them and interacted with their authors. Suddenly, authors of serious fiction were like rock stars, fashionable, sexy creatures, shrewdly marketed and feted in public.The yearly bunfight of the Booker Prize became a matter of keen public interest. Tim Waterstone established the first of a chain of revolutionary bookshops. London publishing houses became the playground of exciting, Trade Review[An] elegant and elegiac memoir . . . the vigour of the book's attack and the hilarity of its anecdotage ... [shows he was] one of the great power-brokers of literary London . . . He was (and is) a good thing and I salute him. -- D. J. Taylor * Literary Review *Very funny . . . I laughed long at the set-piece lunch with [Martin] Amis * Observer *Walsh's enthusiasm for the writing of the 1980s is infectious * Irish Times *This is by no means just a book of literary history, fascinating though much of that is. Walsh also gives us plenty of terrific stories/gossip from those far-off days when newspaper offices were full of typewriter noise and cigarette smoke, and the choice of lunchtime drinks was definitely not restricted to still or sparkling. * Reader's Digest *Through it all, Walsh was there. First as an eager wannabe, then as a full-blooded insider. Any disappointment that his own efforts at a novel didn't prove a ticket to the dream-circus was quickly mitigated once he discovered his potential as a critic, commentator and general facilitator, swishing through the forest as interviewer, literary judge, pundit, speaker, partygoer par excellence . . . An immersive literary history . . . highly readable * Financial Times *Reading John Walsh's adventures in the literary world of the 1980s is like donning a pair of spectacles that bring blurred memories into sudden, sharp focus . . . Walsh describes people, events and places with such accuracy that he will transport oldies back to the era, allowing them to reappraise and appreciate it afresh. His memory - even if dependent on a diary - is prodigious, and his anecdotes polished till they sparkle. * The Oldie *An entertainingly gossipy memoir of the period . . . * The Week *Elegant and entertaining * Critic *[There's a] mixture of high and low, sacred and profane, running through Walsh's account of literary London in the 1980s that makes it such a joy * Sunday Times *Walsh's appetite for celebrity gossip is supplemented by a keen understanding of the business moves behind the invention of these literary stars, while his candour about his own shortcomings is endearing . . . [this] memoir is highly recommended * Irish Examiner *Walsh makes London seem like the place to have been. The stage was smaller; everything burned more brightly; more angels teemed on the head of a pin . . . One of the best things about Circus of Dreams is Walsh's memories not of the big beasts of literature, but of the smaller players - the editors and agents and clubmen and hacks and P.R. people, the various legends in their own lunchtimes. * New York Times *John Walsh's Circus of Dreams sent me reeling nostalgically back to the literary 1980s, where I may remain happily trapped for some time to come * HEAD TOPICS *Alternately fascinating and provocative -- John Sutherland * TLS *Circus of Dreams, the critic and journalist John Walsh's rambunctious and hugely entertaining history of the British literary scene in the 1980s, summons up something of the excitement, and the absurdity, of the period * Spectator World *

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Book SynopsisBorn at Newport News, Virginia, in 1925, William Styron was educated at Duke University. He served in the Marine Corps during the last war, and was recalled to service during the Korean War. After 1952, he lived mainly in Europe, before settling in a rural part of Connecticut. He died in 2006.Trade ReviewHair-raising in the manner of A Tale of Horror by Edgar Allan Poe * Daily Telegraph *As short as a hangman's rope and nearly as arresting - an essay of great gravity and resonance. Never has Styron used so few words so effectively * Newsweek *

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Book SynopsisWinner of the 2020 Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, France''s best foreign book of the year.Astounding' Sebastian BarryA masterpiece' Ayad AkhtarThis little book is ruminative, humane, and gorgeously precise'Jonathan LethemIn this genre-defying book, best-selling memoirist and critic Daniel Mendelsohn explores the mysterious links between the randomness of the lives we lead and the artfulness of the stories we tell.Combining memoir, biography, history, and literary criticism, Three Rings weaves together the stories of three exiled writers who turned to the classics of the past to create masterpieces of their own-works that pondered the nature of narrative itself.Erich Auerbach, the Jewish philologist who fled Hitler''s Germany and wrote his classic study of Western literature, Mimesis, in Istanbul.Francois Fenelon, the seventeenth-century French archbishop whose ingenious sequel to the Odyssey,The Adventures of Telemachus a veiled critique of the Sun King and the best-selling book in Trade Review‘Exquisite … Ornate and oneiric, the results are well worth circling and circling back to’New York Times Book Review ‘As always, the author's voice blends authority with considerable warmth and charm, luring readers into his complex intellectual enthusiasms … Three Rings, a short but profoundly moving work, clings with tenacity to a belief in the regenerative power of literature’Wall Street Journal ‘Spectacular … The reader feels the flow of a strong narrative, trusts the author’s seafaring skills and embarks on a brilliant journey … Three Rings is a glorious celebration of multiplicity, diversity, journeys, transformations and our common humanity’Times Literary Supplement ‘Contained in the interwoven circles of this slim, labyrinthine book is a vision that encompasses the world. Part dirge, part memoir, part exegesis, all rhapsody Mendelsohn's anatomy of literature's subtlest pleasures is itself that subtlest of literary pleasures: a masterpiece’Ayad Akhtar, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Homeland Elegies ‘An astounding Borgesian document of clarity and brilliance. A book about telling stories that wanders down the seeming two roads of the Hebrew tradition and the classical, which, like Proust's two ways, might turn out to be one way after all. Three Rings has the keeled force of a long poem’Sebastian Barry ‘Classicist, historian, memoirist, cultural critic, with consummate skill and the sharp, sympathetic eye of the poet, Daniel Mendelsohn brilliantly combines these roles. Three Rings is a masterly exegesis and demonstration of digression as a high art’Joyce Carol Oates ‘Daniel Mendelsohn's Three Rings is erudition, essayism, and memoir … This little book is ruminative, humane, and gorgeously precise’Jonathan Lethem

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Book SynopsisThis is the brilliant memoir of a man who starts out in Manhattan and comes of age in the skies over Korea, before emerging as one of America's finest authors in the New York of the 1960s. Burning the Days showcases James Salter's uniquely beautiful style with some of the most evocative pages about flying ever written, together with portraits of the actors, directors and authors who later influenced him. It is an unforgettable book about passion, ambition and what it means to live and to write.Trade Review'A wise and sensual memoir. Salter writes his self-portrait by focusing on what has shaped him, by showing what he has loved and admired and feared to become in others. You cannot put it down' Michael Ondaatje‘Salter writes wonderfully of a world most of his readers will never have known’ Observer‘A masterwork of memory, deeply impressive and deeply moving’ Time Out One of the great literary memoirs . . . there is nothing better in English about what it is like to fly' * Spectator *A stylish and moving account of his various incarnations as a fighter pilot, rock climber, screenwriter and novelist . . . written in the heroic language of an American memoir * New Statesman *An extraordinarily gifted composer of prose . . . [a] teller of memorable stories. . . . It isn't often that a writer of superlative skills knows enough about flying to write well about it; Saint-Exupérywas one; Salter is another * New York Times Book Review *He can bestow a powerful aura of glamour and heightened significance to even the most casual encounter . . . entertaining, sharply observed . . . pure and ravishing * The Nation *[His] account of air combat in Korea . . . stands as a masterpiece of battle writing in this century . . . His prose is in flight * Los Angeles Times Book Review *A dazzling book . . . so full of splendid writing that at times the overwhelmed reader may blink like a sleeper awaking to hard light * Philadelphia Inquirer *No man who is even remotely honest with himself can read Burning the Days without envy; no woman of similar truthfulness will fail to find Salter's life deeply romantic -- John Irving * Toronto Globe and Mail *A wonderful book by a sensitive author who is romantic, intelligent, and superbly balanced. It is a serene account of a surprising diversity of experiences, but it is also a history of my time -- Joseph HellerA classic memoir, alive with amazing people, fabulous events, and extraordinary stories of war and love and the great wide world. Through the sheer and sensual force of his writing (and nobodywrites more beautifully), James Salter hasn't only recollected the past, he's reclaimed it -- Michael HerrA magnificent tour-de-force, the pressure of Salter's high romantic soul animates his crisp, rich, neo-classical prose to bring us page after page of narrative magic -- Frank ConroyIf you were to mark every section worth remembering you'd end up with folded corners on every page, scrawls in every paragraph * GQ *Every sentence is fantastic * Observer *It is years since I read a sharper, more arresting autobiography * Spectator *Wonderful * Daily Telegraph *He has written three books that everyone should read before they die: A Sport and a Pastime, Light Years and his recollections, Burning the Days * Independent *

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Book SynopsisAs read on BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week'Moving, intellectual and unsentimental. I think it will become a classic' Melvyn Bragg'Thoughtful, subtle, elegantly clever and oddly joyous, Every Third Thought is beautiful' Kate Mosse In 1995, at the age of forty-two, Robert McCrum suffered a dramatic and near-fatal stroke. Since that life-changing event, McCrum has lived in the shadow of death, unavoidably aware of his own mortality. And now, in his sixties, he is noticing a change: his friends are joining him there. Death has become his contemporaries’ every third thought.And so, with the words of McCrum’s favourite authors as travel companions, Every Third Thought takes us on a journey towards death itself. This is a deeply personal book of reflection and conversation – with brain surgeons, psychologists, hospice workers and patients, writers and poets, and it confronts an existential question: in a world where we have learnt to live well at all costs, can we make peace with dying?Trade ReviewThoughtful, subtle, elegantly clever and oddly joyous, Every Third Thought is beautiful and - most of all - true -- Kate Mosse, author of LabyrinthEvery Third Thought is an important book, and one that brings death into the light, uncovering both the losses we have to endure, as well as the gifts we can receive if we are open to it. Profoundly moving and fascinating. It is a gem. -- Julia Samuel, author of Grief WorksAs an assemblage of great quotes and prompts for further reading, Every Third Thought rivals DJ Enright's anthology The Oxford Book of Death. McCrum adds striking metaphors of his own. -- Blake Morrison * Guardian *A wry and reflective treatise on mortality . . . fascinating and paradoxically enjoyable -- Roger Lewis * The Times *We have to think about death, and talk about it, perhaps rather more than we do. And if that’s so, there can be no better guide than a wise, humane and battered-about writer like McCrum. He has thought deeply, talked widely, read voraciously and experienced much . . . by the time I had finished this book, I had a silly grin on my face. That was partly because it ends with a happy surprise, but more importantly because you cannot confront the meaning of death without a refreshed and more vivid understanding of the glory of being alive . . . As I closed it, having stared pretty steadily at extinction, I found myself encouraged and fortified. So, really, thank you, Robert. -- Andrew Marr * Mail on Sunday *I can't think of another writer who could display such learning and erudition with this lightness of touch. Robert McCrum seems to have read everything, but you never feel he's lecturing; rather, he is a delightful and amused companion. The subject of Every Third Thought is so serious, yet it's illuminated by such humanity and flashes of wit that the reader closes it feeling oddly comforted. Only a writer in total command of his subject could present all this so deftly. Every Third Thought is a constant source of wisdom and interest . . . a gem -- Cressida ConnollyMarvellous . . . Every Third Thought is a reminder of the shadows on the grass, even at this time of year; that we shouldn’t be afraid of them, that in time they will come to enfold us all . . . McCrum's book shows us that we should grab all the living moments and live in them, while we are here. * Scotsman *A wonderful book, so personal that it holds you in its grip -- Rabbi Julia NeubergerA jewel of a book: our most profound thoughts, gracefully shaped . . . thoughtful, humane and full of warmth -- David BodanisEvery Third Thought is simply stunning: a brilliant, wise, compassionate and consoling account of death and dying in a secular age. McCrum moves seamlessly from personal testimonies to medical case studies to recent developments in neuroscience. He asks profound philosophical questions about mortality, finitude and the unknown. A uniquely beautiful and significant book -- Joanna Kavenna, author of The Ice Museum Reading McCrum's book, with its jaunty, gentle, meandering style, is like going on a country ramble with an exquisitely knowledgeable yet modest friend, discussing the meaning of life. Although it's a slender work on a well-worn subject, it would be hard to find a more agreeable or erudite companion for the journey along the road towards life's inevitable dead end. * Literary Review *Both intensely personal and coolly objective . . . McCrum carries us with him on a tour d'horizon that is witty, companionable and compulsively readable. And in the final pages comes a twist to make the heart soar: evidence that however bleak, however short the time left, it is never too late to be surprised by joy -- Maggie Fergusson * Spectator *Engaging and honest... A narrative full of vigour, even (sometimes) black humour... It is like wandering around with a wise peer, eavesdropping on his conversations and enjoying his literary quotations. With the distinguished British neurologist Andrew Lees, he discusses the death-in-life that is Alzheimer’s disease and continues this theme with world-famous brain surgeon (and bestselling author of Do No Harm) Henry Marsh -- Bel Mooney * Daily Mail *A beautifully contemplative account of what it means to be dying, as we all are, in the midst of life . . . a deep and engaged set of questions and ruminations . . . Strangely, by pressing so hard into his subject, he has written a book that is lifted and lightened with affirmation of life. There is not a single story that he tells, no matter how grave, that is not made joyous by the fine attention of his writing and its judicious and intelligent use of quotation and literary and scientific material . . . In McCrum’s book, the quotations, poetry and information collated are part of the weave of its fabric. It’s why his story has such lift and reach. It is never just about Robert McCrum thinking about death. It becomes a continuation of a great discussion that has been taking place since the beginning of recorded culture. -- Kirsty Gunn * New Statesman *Robert McCrum's elegant series of essays captures that sense of inevitability and surprise that comes into any discussion of mortality . . . He is an impeccable stylist . . . The book is graciously about others as much as it is about himself . . . It is also a work of literary criticism, examining the ways in which our anxieties about ageing and dying have been represented in prose and poetry. McCrum is admirably eclectic in his tastes here . . . This eloquent book shows that it is not just philosophy that "teaches us to die well," but literature - and more than that, a common humanity. -- Stuart Kelly * Scotland on Sunday *McCrum's investigative spirit takes hold and keeps pathos at bay . . . This is a brave book, which faces what most of us avoid thinking about, and it even manages a joke. -- John Carey * Sunday Times *An unflinching exploration of [McCrum's] own mortality and that of other people. It draws on personal experience, the testimony of friends, the works of great writers, and interviews with experts in medicine and psychotherapy, melded together in an engaging conversational style . . . McCrum’s bravery in staring into the abyss cannot be overestimated; reading his book inevitably brings moments of terror. But Every Third Thought has something positive to offer, too. The approach of death can reveal extraordinary reserves of courage and heighten people’s appreciation of the world around them. * Economist *And enthralling, wise and very necessary read * Radio Times *Moving, intellectual and unsentimental. I think it will become a classic -- Melvyn Bragg, New Statesman, Books of the Year 2017Every Third Thought – part autobiography, part meditations on death, part interviews – is seasoned by telling references to a wide range of literature. It is moving, intellectual and unsentimental. I think it will become a classic. -- Melvyn Bragg * New Statesman *McCrum writes with elegance and candour about the question of mortality salience. * New Statesman *

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Book SynopsisA pitch-perfect memoir, brilliantly funny, wise and moving, of family, friends and political life over the last sixty yearsTrade Review'Hard to beat. I could read this sort of book for ever' Stephen Fry, Independent 'Reading this book actually makes you feel perceptibly happier and buoyed up' Evening Standard 'An unadulterated joy Every page is shot through with anecdote and wit, so that the whole experience feels like being at a peculiarly wonderful dinner party Funny, astute and clever' Observer 'A loving, lyrical, life-filled memoir' Guardian

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Book SynopsisSHORTLISTED FOR THE BARBELLION PRIZE 2021 'A manifesto for recalibrating' DAILY MAIL 'I can’t think of many books where the reader feels so passionately on the side of the narrator' GUARDIAN 'A profound redefinition of the very idea of vitality' FINANCIAL TIMES Josie George lives in a tiny terraced house in the urban West Midlands with her son. Since her early childhood, she has lived with the fluctuating and confusing challenge of disabling chronic illness. But Josie’s world is surprising, intricate, dynamic. She has learned what to look for: the routines of her friends at the community centre; the neighbourhood birds in flight; the slow changes in the morning light, in her small garden, in her growing son, in herself. In January 2018, Josie sets out to tell the story of her still life, over the course of a year. As the seasons shift, and the tides of her body draw in and out, Josie begins to unfurl her history. And against a world which values progress and productivity above all else, Josie sets out a quietly radical alternative: to value and treasure life for life itself, with all its great and small miracles. 'Full of kindness, A Still Life will make you a better person' CLARE MACKINTOSH 'A Still Life is joy-lit: vivid, lovestruck, hopeful and wise' MELISSA HARRISON 'Josie George is the kind of writer I strive to be ... A tough, tender, beautiful book about existing in a body in the world' ELLA RISBRIDGER 'Could not be more timely ... An immensely talented writer' LINDA GRANT Trade ReviewInspiring ... How fragile we are, she notes, how fleeting our joys ... Describes a way of living now familiar to many of us -- TRACEY THORNE * New Statesman *A moving account of living with a chronic illness * Independent *In all honesty, I've never come across a new writer with more to offer the world -- MELISSA HARRISONA profound redefinition of the very idea of vitality * Financial Times *Audacious, exuberant ... I can’t think of many books where the reader feels so passionately on the side of the narrator * Guardian *A Still Life is that rarest of things: a memoir that reads like a novel. In a world where we are continually made to think bigger is better, Josie reminds us of the joy to be found from a small, quiet life. Full of kindness, A Still Life will make you a better person -- CLARE MACKINTOSHThis book would always have found a loyal readership – its vivid prose and meticulous, kindly candour ensure it. But coming now, at a time when record numbers have been struggling with their own ill-health and when many more have been forced to slow down, it feels like a manifesto for recalibrating * Daily Mail *Could not be more timely ... Josie is an immensely talented writer and thinker who sees a world in a grain of sand and we're all made richer for it ... I hope it’s a bestseller -- LINDA GRANTJosie George is the kind of writer I strive to be: meticulous and exacting in her documenting of joy and pain, and how those are the same thing. George sees things other people miss, and that's the point: it's about noticing, about seeing, about learning to see. A tough, tender, beautiful book about existing in a body in the world. I loved it -- ELLA RISBRIDGERThis memoir feels like the book we all need right now * Good Housekeeping *An exquisitely pitched memoir of disability and living with chronic pain, but also of finding joy and wonder * Bookseller, Editor's Choice *

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Book SynopsisFROM THE INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF WHAT I LOVED AND A WOMAN LOOKING AT MEN LOOKING AT WOMEN''Richly intelligent insights on every page'' Financial Times''A rare kind of quiet intellectual confidence'' Sunday TelegraphIn these fascinating, lively and engaging essays, Siri Hustvedt shows what lies behind her fiction: an abiding curiosity about who we are and how we got that way. Covering a wide range of subjects, from the nature of desire to false memories and the paintings of Goya, she draws on her own life and on the insights provided by both the arts and sciences to deepen our understanding of what it means to be human - to live, think and look.''There is something refreshingly straightforward about her style. It has the confidence born of complex but well digested thoughts'' ObserverPRAISE FOR SIRI HUSTVEDT:''Hustvedt is that rare artist, a writer oTrade ReviewHer erudition, the sharp clarity of her thinking, the variety of her sources and the supple ways in which she weaves them into personal narrative, coupled with her fearlessness in the face of those aspects of the human condition which are of necessity ambiguous, infuse her work with a rare kind of quiet intellectual confidence...I'll be returning to these essays. * Melanie McGrath, Sunday Telegraph *richly intelligent insights on every page * George Pendle, Financial Times *Siri Hustvedt is best known as a novelist and her novels have received a deserved acclaim. But to my mind, she is even more to be admired as an essayist...there is something refreshingly straightforward about her style. It has the confidence born of complex but well digested thoughts and thus lacks the tendency to obfuscate that is the hallmark of the inferior thinker's style. * Salley Vikcers, Observer *...she is an inspiring guide to territory where both the humanities and the sciences can throw light on the ways in which we construct meaning in our lives. * Nick Rennison, Sunday Times, Culture *Hustvedt addresses a broad public without dumbing down her material... At once stimulating and warm-hearted, with sentences of drop-dead beauty and acuity on nearly every page. * Kirkus *Hustvedt's deep interest in art, psychology, and neuroscience shape her brilliantly insightful novels as well as her virtuoso essays...Mystery, fact, intelligence, and enchantment flourish here. * Booklist *exquisitely eloquent...You'll be by turns inspired, provoked, educated and enchanted. Her writing is scientifically precise and poetically elegant, and this intense compilation merits careful attention. It's a book you can return to time and time again. * Beatrice Hodgkin, Easy Living *These essays offer thoughts on locating morality in the brain, the origins of desire and who we are when we sleep...I suggest you take this book to your favourite corner, turn off the phone and allow yourself to be reminded of the pure pleasure of using your mind. * Clare Longrigg, Psychologies *

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Book SynopsisA guide to writing fiction by the Booker Prize-winning author of Vernon God Little.Part biography, part reflection and part practical guide, Release the Bats explores the mysteries of why and how we tell stories, and the craft of writing fiction. DBC Pierre reveals everything he learned the hard way.

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Book Synopsis*The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller*Rose Tremain (or Rosie as she was then) grew up in post-war London – a city still partly in ruins, where both food and affection were fiercely rationed. But when she is ten years old, everything changes. She loses her father, her house, her school, her friends and is dispatched to a freezing boarding-school in Hertfordshire. Slowly though, the teenage Rosie escapes from the cold world of the Fifties, into a place of inspiration and friendship, where a young writer is suddenly ready to be born.‘An evocative, unflinching memoir...electric’ Mail on SundayTrade ReviewRose Tremain famously eschews autobiographical material in her fiction, so this account of her childhood feels so fresh it stings… [she] brings her formidable talent for characterisation to bear on the vanished, culpable cast of her childhood -- Claire Lowdon * Sunday Times, **Books of the Year** *Rose Tremain manages to fit more wisdom, more unforgettable scenes, more illuminating recollections, into this 194-page memoir than other writers do in memoirs three times the length. A book as nourishing, but concise as this makes you wonder why other writers have to be so long-winded ... For anyone who loves Tremain's novels this memoir is a vital companion -- Ysenda Maxton Graham * The Times *Intriguing and moving ... So much more alert and open and alive than so many slightly disappointing memoirs by otherwise great writers ... Rosie is a work of self-discovery in the best possible sense of the word - it pulls you in, unsettles, comforts and exhilarates and, finally, makes you see your life anew -- Julie Myerson * The Spectator *Rose Tremain turns to non-fiction for the first time with this lyrical account of her life up to the age of 18 ... The evocation of 1950s schoolgirldom, with all its emotions, elations and smells, is wonderfully vivid - distinctive, like being donated a set of dreams ... A quiet drama, but as you'd expect it's the writing that makes this book such a delight -- Claire Harman * Evening Standard *A beautifully written ode to the tenacity of our younger selves -- Francesca Brown * Stylist *

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Book Synopsis‘Barbara Pym is one of my most favourite novelists. Few other writers have given me more laughter and more pleasure’ - Jilly Cooper‘I'm a huge fan of Barbara Pym’ - Richard Osman‘Could one write a book based on one’s diaries over thirty years? I certainly have enough material,’ wroteBarbara Pym. This book, selected from the diaries, notebooks and letters of this much-loved novelist to form a continuous narrative, is indeed a unique autobiography, providing a privileged insight into a writer’s mind. It includes a forward from bestselling author – and Barbara Pym fan – Jilly Cooper.Philip Larkin wrote that Barbara Pym had ‘a unique eye and ear for the small poignancies of everyday life’. Her autobiography amply demonstrates this, as it traces her life from exuberant times at Oxford in the thirties, through the war when, scarred by an unhappy love affair, she joined the WRNS, to the published novelist of the fifties. It also deals with the long period when her novels were out of fashion and no one would publish them, her rediscovery in 1977, and the triumphant success of her last few years.It is now possible to describe a place, situation or person as ‘very Barbara Pym’. A Very Private Eye, at once funny and moving, shows the variety and depth of her own story.Praise for A Very Private Eye:‘It increases the understanding and enjoyment of her novels enormously’ - Auberon Waugh, Daily Mail‘The perfect complement to the fiction’ - Paul Bailey, The Observer‘Her sharp and very private eye never failed her’ Victoria Glendinning, The New York TimesTrade ReviewI’d sooner a new Barbara Pym than a new Jane Austen -- Philip LarkinBarbara Pym’s unpretentious, subtle, accomplished novels are for me the finest examples of high comedy to have appeared in England during the past seventy-five years . . . Spectacular * The Sunday Times *Barbara Pym has a sharp eye for the exact nuances of socialbehaviour * The Times *An alert miniaturist . . . Her novels have a distinctive flavour, as instantly recognisable as Lapsang tea * The Daily Telegraph *One does not laugh out loud while reading Barbara Pym; that would be too much. One smiles. One smiles and puts down the book to enjoy the smile. Then one picks it up again and a few minutes later an unexpected observation on human foibles makes one smile again -- Alexander McCall SmithMy favourite writer . . . I pick up her book with joy, as though I were meeting an old dear friend who comforts me, extends my vision and makes me roar with laughter -- Jilly CooperSo quintessentially English . . . If you read A Very Private Eye, you'll discover there all the quietly remarkable qualities that caused the publishing world to reverse itself about her * The New York Times *Barbara Pym is the rarest of treasures, she reminds us of the heart-breaking silliness of everyday life -- Anne TylerPym makes me smile, laugh out loud, consider my own foibles and fantasies and, above all, suffer real regret when I reach the final page -- Mavis Cheek

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