The Quickening Maze

The Quickening Maze PDF Author: Adam Foulds
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101442204
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 171

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Book Description
“It has been a while since I have read a book as richly sown with beauty . . . A remarkable work, remarkable for the precision and vitality of its perceptions and for the successful intricacy of its prose.” —James Wood, The New Yorker A visionary novel by "one of the most talented writers of his generation"—The Times Literary Supplement Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize Based on real events, The Quickening Maze won over UK critics and readers alike with its rapturous prose and vivid exploration of poetry and madness. Historically accurate yet brilliantly imagined, this is the debut publication of this elegant and riveting novel in the United States. In 1837, after years of struggling with alcoholism and depression, the great nature poet John Clare finds himself in High Beach—a mental institution located in Epping Forest on the outskirts of London. It is not long before another famed writer, the young Alfred Tennyson, moves nearby and grows entwined in the catastrophic schemes of the hospital's owner, the peculiar Dr. Matthew Allen, his lonely adolescent daughter, and a coterie of mysterious local characters. With lyrical grace, the cloistered world of High Beach and its residents are brought richly to life in this enchanting book.

The Quickening Maze

The Quickening Maze PDF Author: Adam Foulds
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101442204
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 171

Get Book Here

Book Description
“It has been a while since I have read a book as richly sown with beauty . . . A remarkable work, remarkable for the precision and vitality of its perceptions and for the successful intricacy of its prose.” —James Wood, The New Yorker A visionary novel by "one of the most talented writers of his generation"—The Times Literary Supplement Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize Based on real events, The Quickening Maze won over UK critics and readers alike with its rapturous prose and vivid exploration of poetry and madness. Historically accurate yet brilliantly imagined, this is the debut publication of this elegant and riveting novel in the United States. In 1837, after years of struggling with alcoholism and depression, the great nature poet John Clare finds himself in High Beach—a mental institution located in Epping Forest on the outskirts of London. It is not long before another famed writer, the young Alfred Tennyson, moves nearby and grows entwined in the catastrophic schemes of the hospital's owner, the peculiar Dr. Matthew Allen, his lonely adolescent daughter, and a coterie of mysterious local characters. With lyrical grace, the cloistered world of High Beach and its residents are brought richly to life in this enchanting book.

In the Wolf's Mouth

In the Wolf's Mouth PDF Author: Adam Foulds
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448181615
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
From the author of the Man Booker shortlisted The Quickening Maze In the Wolf’s Mouth follows the lives of four very different men, all of them navigating the chaos and horror brought about by the Second World War. Fighting for the Allies are Will Walker, an ambitious English Field Security Officer and Ray Marfione, a wide-eyed Italian-American infantryman who dreams of home and the movies. Meanwhile in Sicily, Angilù, a young shepherd caught up in corruption and Cirò Albanese, a sinister Mafioso, are fighting their own battles with devastating consequences.

Dream Sequence

Dream Sequence PDF Author: Adam Foulds
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374718768
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Adam Foulds, the award-winning author of The Quickening Maze, pens a stunning and terrifying vision of the damage done between a fan and a celebrity in Dream Sequence—where the borders between inner and outer life have been made porous in a world full of flickering screens large and small. Henry became famous starring in The Grange, a television drama beloved by mothers and wives, and whose fans speak about the characters as though they were real people . . . yet Henry dreams of escaping the small screen. An audition for a movie directed by a highly respected Spanish auteur holds the promise of a way forward. Whether holed up in his apartment eating monkish meals of rice and steamed vegetables or snorting cocaine at desert parties in Doha, Henry’s awareness of his own image, of his relative place in the world, is acute and constant. But Henry has also—unwittingly—become an important part of the life of recently divorced Kristin. He appears repeatedly on the television in her beautiful, empty Philadelphia house, and her social media feeds bring news of his London home, his family. What Kristin wants is simply to get as close to him in real life as she has in her fandom.

The Broken Word

The Broken Word PDF Author: Adam Foulds
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101513489
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 80

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Book Description
The stunning debut from "one of the best British writers to emerge in the past decade." (Julian Barnes) With a voice that is at once fierce and lyrical, Adam Foulds tells the story of the Mau Mau uprising against British colonial rule in 1950s Kenya. Tom, a young man who has returned to his family's farm, rapidly becomes caught up in the intensifying events of violence and brutality in a conflict Foulds illustrates as both utterly contemporary and yet deeply burdened by the history of race and empire in this region. The Broken Word was the recipient of the Costa (Whitbread) Poetry Award, and Foulds's The Quickening Maze was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize.

Love and Summer

Love and Summer PDF Author: William Trevor
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101148535
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 157

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Book Description
It?s summer and nothing much is happening in Rathmoye. So it doesn?t go unnoticed when a dark-haired stranger appears on his bicycle and begins photographing the mourners at Mrs. Connulty?s funeral. Florian Kilderry couldn?t know that the Connultys are said to own half the town: he has only come to Rathmoye to photograph the scorched remains of its burnt- out cinema. A few miles out in the country, Dillahan, a farmer and a decent man, has married again: Ellie is the young convent girl who came to work for him when he was widowed. Ellie leads a quiet, routine life, often alone while Dillahan runs the farm. Florian is planning to leave Ireland and start over. Ellie is settled in her new role as Dillahan?s wife. But Florian?s visit to Rathmoye introduces him to Ellie, and a dangerously reckless attachment begins. In a characteristically masterly way Trevor evokes the passions and frustrations felt by Ellie and Florian, and by the people of a small Irish town during one long summer.

The Glass Room

The Glass Room PDF Author: Simon Mawer
Publisher: Other Press, LLC
ISBN: 1590513975
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
Honeymooners Viktor and Liesel Landauer are filled with the optimism and cultural vibrancy of central Europe of the 1920s when they meet modernist architect Rainer von Abt. He builds for them a home to embody their exuberant faith in the future, and the Landauer House becomes an instant masterpiece. Viktor and Liesel, a rich Jewish mogul married to a thoughtful, modern gentile, pour all of their hopes for their marriage and budding family into their stunning new home, filling it with children, friends, and a generation of artists and thinkers eager to abandon old-world European style in favor of the new and the avant-garde. But as life intervenes, their new home also brings out their most passionate desires and darkest secrets. As Viktor searches for a warmer, less challenging comfort in the arms of another woman, and Liesel turns to her wild, mischievous friend Hana for excitement, the marriage begins to show signs of strain. The radiant honesty and idealism of 1930 quickly evaporate beneath the storm clouds of World War II. As Nazi troops enter the country, the family must leave their old life behind and attempt to escape to America before Viktor's Jewish roots draw Nazi attention, and before the family itself dissolves. As the Landauers struggle for survival abroad, their home slips from hand to hand, from Czech to Nazi to Soviet possession and finally back to the Czechoslovak state, with new inhabitants always falling under the fervent and unrelenting influence of the Glass Room. Its crystalline perfection exerts a gravitational pull on those who know it, inspiring them, freeing them, calling them back, until the Landauers themselves are finally drawn home to where their story began. Brimming with barely contained passion and cruelty, the precision of science, the wild variance of lust, the catharsis of confession, and the fear of failure - the Glass Room contains it all.

The Truth About These Strange Times

The Truth About These Strange Times PDF Author: Adam Foulds
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1780228724
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
From the author of the Man Booker shortlisted The Quickening Maze, a brilliant, touching and funny story about an extraordinary friendship. 'A novel bursting with incident, humour, humanity and literary promise' Sunday Times Saul Dawson-Smith is ten years old. He can memorise the sequence of a shuffled deck of cards in under a minute and is in training for the World Memory Championships. Howard McNamee is twenty-eight: lonely, overweight, poorly educated, and on the run from his memories of a murky Glaswegian childhood. As Howard navigates a bewildering new life in London - including accidentally acquiring a Russian fiancée - he is taken under the wing of Saul's parents, and forms an unlikely friendship with the solitary boy. But as pressure mounts before the Championship, Howard realises he must act to save his small friend from a life of unbearable expectation. And so, he and Saul head out on the strangest road trip of all time - one that will turn both their lives upside down.

The Poet's Wife

The Poet's Wife PDF Author: Judith Allnatt
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 144648789X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 403

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Book Description
It is 1841. Patty is married to John Clare: peasant poet, genius and madman. Travelling home one day, Patty finds her husband sitting, footsore, at the side of the road, having absconded from a lunatic asylum over eighty miles away. Hopeful that his condition has improved, she takes his hands in delight but he fails to recognize her. She is devastated to discover that he has not returned home to find her, but to search for his childhood sweetheart, Mary Joyce, to whom he believes he is married. Patty still loves John deeply, but he seems lost to her, obsessed with the idealised image of a woman that she cannot possibly match. Plagued by jealousy, she seeks strength in memories: their whirlwind courtship, the poems John wrote for her, their shared affinity for the land. She must try to heal John's turbulent, unhappy soul and restore him to the man she married. But as John descends further into delusion and his behaviour becomes increasingly volatile, hope seems to be fading. Will she ever be able to conquer her own anger and hurt and reconcile with this man she now barely knows?

The Quickening

The Quickening PDF Author: Rhiannon Ward
Publisher: Trapeze
ISBN: 1409192199
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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Book Description
'If you like gothic mystery, buckle up! This atmospheric read has it all' Woman magazine 'An historical novel dripping with menace' Shari Lapena, author of The End of Her *********** England, 1925. Louisa Drew lost her husband in the First World War and her six-year-old twin sons in the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. Newly re-married and seven months pregnant, Louisa is asked by her employer to travel to Clewer Hall in Sussex where she is to photograph the contents of the house for auction. She learns Clewer Hall was host to an infamous séance in 1896, and that the lady of the house has asked those who gathered back then to come together once more to recreate the evening. When a mysterious child appears on the grounds, Louisa finds herself compelled to investigate and becomes embroiled in the strange happenings of the house. Gradually, she unravels the long-held secrets of the inhabitants and what really happened thirty years before... and discovers her own fate is entwined with that of Clewer Hall's. For fans of The Silent Companions, The Little Stranger and The Familiars, an exquisitely crafted and compelling mystery that invites the reader in to the crumbling Clewer Hall to help unlock its secrets. ********** 'Utterly brilliant... full of secrets and deliciously creepy' Lisa Hall, author of The Perfect Couple 'A spooky treat, which had me turning the pages faster and faster' Cass Green, author of In a Cottage in a Wood

The Quickening Maze

The Quickening Maze PDF Author: Adam Foulds
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781408461228
Category : Biographical fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
Based on real events in Epping Forest on the edge of London around 1840, 'The Quickening Maze' centres on the first incarceration of the great nature poet John Clare.