Description

Book Synopsis
A Suburb of Heaven is a collection built from observation and speculation. Based on artist Stanley Spencer's work in the first section and the part-imagined life of Anna O, patient zero of psychoanalysis, in the second, it is a feast for the senses. Spencer's predilection for using Biblical scenes in a rural context carries a narrative impetus that Pnina Shinebourne builds on to create revelatory poetic highs, "half-way between drunkenness and reverie". These moments of altered reality perhaps lead inevitably to the sequence on Anna O, which starts with the curiously apt line, "Transference, said Freud". From that opening, Pnina invents Anna O's history, complete with music notes and linguistic asides. The imagery here is soft against what was sold as hard science; a struggling patient's emotions set against the speculating notes of ambitious men.

Trade Review
"A very ambitiously conceived [pamphlet] that succeeds beautifully as poetry on its own terms and for its own sake... inviting readers to peer into strange funhouse mirrors." - Dr Lauri Ramey, California State University, Los Angeles

A Suburb of Heaven

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    A Paperback / softback by Pnina Shinebourne

    £6.96

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    Order before 4pm tomorrow for delivery by Mon 12 Oct 2026.

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      Book details

      Publisher Flipped Eye Publishing Limited
      Published 20 July 2017
      ISBN-13 9781905233526
      978-1905233526
      ISBN-10 1905233523

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      A Suburb of Heaven is a collection built from observation and speculation. Based on artist Stanley Spencer's work in the first section and the part-imagined life of Anna O, patient zero of psychoanalysis, in the second, it is a feast for the senses. Spencer's predilection for using Biblical scenes in a rural context carries a narrative impetus that Pnina Shinebourne builds on to create revelatory poetic highs, "half-way between drunkenness and reverie". These moments of altered reality perhaps lead inevitably to the sequence on Anna O, which starts with the curiously apt line, "Transference, said Freud". From that opening, Pnina invents Anna O's history, complete with music notes and linguistic asides. The imagery here is soft against what was sold as hard science; a struggling patient's emotions set against the speculating notes of ambitious men.

      Trade Review
      "A very ambitiously conceived [pamphlet] that succeeds beautifully as poetry on its own terms and for its own sake... inviting readers to peer into strange funhouse mirrors." - Dr Lauri Ramey, California State University, Los Angeles

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