Contact : 6 Croxted Road West Dulwich London SE21 8SW Tel: 020 8670 1920 Fax: 020 8670 9842 dulwichbooks@yahoo.co.uk
Interesting Links
|
Tel:
Orders / Enquiries
"Anne liked words. She learnt to read very early, although she never achieved full understanding, or so they said. It was just that she liked the words themselves too much, had they known. She liked to feel their individual shape in her mouth, berries to be rolled round whole. She liked the separate sounds of them, the weight of them dropping, not crushed all together and lost." When I ordered 10 copies of this marvellous book in a rush of enthusiasm, I told the manager, "Don't worry I will sell them all!" little did I think I would sell them all next day. This is an intensely moving study of one of the drop outs of society and of the way that society impinges on the natural world and all of it's flora and fauna. Anne is a big 14 year old girl who has out-grown her working class family's crowded council house and it's low end consumer concerns. They live on the edge of a large forest and this is where Anne goes to make her life out of whatever she can find. She is an intense, clever person full of love and starved of opportunities to share her love. She encounters people with great caution but any approach by a "Woman of the Woods" is going to involve misunderstanding. Laura Beatty writes as if she had the soul of a forest and indeed there is a repeating chorus of trees which help to create a poetic masterpiece. Philip A fierce and wonderful book … This is just the sort of generous, provocative novel the Booker judges should cherish...Bewitching… despite its readability, Pollard is the precise opposite of escapist literature, because it gives the reader back the world - Observer Beatty has a wonderful ear for voice, especially the voices of children, and the characters she constructs through Anne's skewed perception are funny and heartbreaking by turns; but what is really impressive is how she weaves her human comedy with the most powerful nature writing… This novel heralds an exceptional talent’ - Guardian Enchanting…Beatty is
a writer of extraordinary power…alive to every nuance of behaviour This is a moving
novel, delicate yet powerful, whose unusual heroine charms absolutely Most contemporary
depictions of homelessness tend to home in on the urban, gritty aspect,
conveying inner-city squalor. Laura Beatty's lyrical, pastoral Pollard admirably
takes a different tack… Beatty writes about endurance with compassion and
empathy. She fantastically conveys the elemental quality of Anne's life
and the ways in which her strangeness makes relationships with other human
beings much more fraught than her dealings with the harsh, beautiful
woodland world
2666 by Roberto BolañoWritten with burning intensity
in the last years of Roberto Bolano's life, "2666" has been greeted across
the world as the great writer's masterpiece, surpassing everything in
imagination, beauty and scope. It is a novel on an astonishing scale from
a passionate visionary. 'The best book of 2008 ...A masterpiece, the
electrifying literary event of the year' - "Time". Roberto Bolaño's oeuvre has to be seen as one vast dust-laden Latin American leather globe tooled with Spanish gold and stitched haphazardly with travellers from the four winds smelling of tequila, drug deals, death and poetry. Everything is interconnected, all the poets have been involved with the visceral realists and Auxilio Lacouture is their literary mother, an icon of mythical proportions as a result of the privations she suffered, hidden in the women's lavatory on the fourth floor of the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature during the occupation of the University of Mexico by the Army in 1968. "Last Evenings on Earth" a book of short stories, gave us the rudiments of his style and content, the Savage Detectives gave us Visceral Realism, Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano, poets like Butch and Sundance both of whom in this circular and spherical world owe much to Auxilio Lacouture. Bolaño wrote other novels including "Nazi Literature in the Americas", "By Night in Chile", "Distant Star", "The Skating Rink", and the recently re-published "Amulet" which is Auxilio's story. Then there is "2666", which is very difficult to describe except that IT is the vast dust-laden Latin American leather globe tooled with Spanish gold and stitched haphazardly with travellers from the four winds smelling of tequila, drug deals, death and poetry. Five parts in one huge volume in which the central character Benno Archimboldo appears like a gust of wind on a Baltic beach and is gone . Everyone, however, talks about him from literary critics in Paris to detectives in Mexico. They seek him here...If you like one paragraph of Roberto Bolaño you will love "2666". It is not an easy ride, but what is that turns out to be worthwhile Philip
Sword of Honour by Evelyn Waugh Waugh's own unhappy experience
of being a soldier is superbly re-enacted in this story of Guy Crouchback,
a Catholic and a gentleman, commissioned into the Royal Corps of
Halberdiers during the war years 1939-45. High comedy - in the company of
Brigadier Ritchie-Hook or the denizens of Bellamy's Club - is only part of
the shambles of Crouchback's war. When action comes in Crete and in
Yugoslavia, he discovers not heroism, but humanity. At this time of commemoration of the beginning of WWII Sword of Honour is beautifully comic rendition of the ubiquitous mundane passages of soldiering and war. It is also a contrast with modern warfare and yet a mirror of the abiding tragedy. Philip
If you've been in the shop at any point over the last couple of years, you'll probably have had someone attempt to sell you this book! A short and brilliant story about a man living on a farm with his very drunk grandfather, an angry duck and lots of unnecessary fencing.. First published in the UK eleven years ago, still my favourite novel! Great characters, wonderful story. Roy
Communicating your enthusiasm for life goes hand in hand with loving life with all its ups and downs its trepidations on foreign hillsides and its comforts by a roaring fire at home. These two old friends make you realise that everything positive about life and friendship is worth celebrating. Full of jolly japes, fascinating social connections, privilege, hard work, buffers, dowagers, royals and all. Healthy stuff - she's 89 now, he's 94! Philip
Hardback picture book about a girl who loses her smile - charming, and beautifully illustrated! Roy
Scary Stories to chill you in the warm summer months:
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters During a dusty post-war summer Dr. Faraday is called to the Ayres' manor house, once grand, now in a state of decline. The patient, the young maid, is sure that there is something evil in the house. Slowly the events start spiralling out of control. Is there really something supernatural haunting the Ayres family? An atmospheric ghost story as well as a study of the British class system. Outstanding!
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James One of the best ghost stories ever written. What did really happen, while a young governess is looking after two orphans? Two schools of thought come to different conclusions as to what really happens in the story... which one will you join?
The Strain by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan After flight 753 touches ground, all communication to the plane is lost. All the blinds are drwan, nothing moves inside, just eerie silence answers to flight control. When the Dr. Ephraim Goodweather and his team of the Centre for Disease control open the plane they find all the passengers dead in their seats. What has taken the lives of everyone on board, without any signs of panic, poisoning or gas? Abraham Setrakian, formerly professor in Europe, now owner of a pawn shop in New York does know what or better who is responsible. Will they believe him? Are the victims really dead? And why are all of New York's rats leaving the sewers? A brilliant new take on an old myth.
The Devil's Elixirs by E.T.A. Hoffmann A young monk is looking after the orders' relics. Amongst them a phial with the devil's elixirs. Some guests in the monastery dare him to open the little flask and drink some of it... Suddenly he finds himself in a maelstroem of events: Desires, doppelgaengers, temptation and murder. A fantastic classic.
I am Legend by Richard Matheson An intelligent political comment on politics, humanity and terrorism in the guise of an apocalyptic science fiction: the last man living on earth fights an army of vampires every night. ‘THE DRAGONFLY POOL’ BY EVA IBBOTSON
A heart warming tale of
Tally Hamilton - thrust into a seemingly dull boarding school. It turns
out she was wrong - Delderton Hall is not just any school; it is eccentric
and like nowhere she has been before. Alex aged 11 ‘THE PARLIAMENT OF BLOOD’ BY JUSTIN RICHARDS From
page one, you cannot put this book down. Set in the late Victorian times,
it relates the story of the rise of the hidden vampires in British
society. Will their Parliament of Blood rule the British Empire? Alex aged 11
|
Pollard by Laura Beatty
Fup by Jim Dodge
In Tearing Haste by Deborah Devonshire, Patrick Leigh
Fermor
Smile by
Leigh Hodgkinson
