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How 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.
When 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.
Funny, warm and wise, Bleaker House is a book about trying, and failing, to write a novel.
‘The Pigeon Tunnel’, John le Carré’s memoir and his first work of non-fiction, is a thrilling journey into the worlds of his ‘secret sharers’ – the men and women, who inspired some of his most enthralling novels – and a testament to the author’s extraordinary engagement with the last half-century. The reader is swept along not just by the chilling winds of the Cold War or by the author’s frightening journeys into places of terrible violence but, most importantly, by the author’s inimitable voice. In this astonishing work we see our world, both public and private, through the eyes of one of this country’s greatest writers.
The violent racism of the American South drove Wayne Flynt away from his home state of Alabama, but the publication of ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, Harper Lee’s classic novel about courage, community and equality, inspired him to return in the early 1960s and craft a career documenting and teaching Alabama history. His writing resonated with many Alabamians, in particular three sisters: Louise, Alice and Nelle Harper Lee. Beginning with their first meeting in 1983, a mutual respect and affection for the state’s history and literature matured into a deep friendship between two families who can trace their roots there back more than 5 generations. Flynt and Nelle Harper Lee began writing to one other while she was living in New York. This is a collection of their correspondence and a compelling look into the mind, heart and work of one of the most admired authors in modern literary history.
In the summer of 2002, Shannon Leone Fowler, a was backpacking with her fiancé Sean in Thailand. They were planning to return to Melbourne after their excursion to Koh Pha Ngan, but their plans were tragically derailed when a box jellyfish wrapped around Sean’s legs, stinging and killing him in minutes. Rejecting the Thai authorities attempt to label the death ‘drunk drowning,’ Shannon ferried his body home to his stunned family – a family to which she suddenly no longer belonged. Shattered and untethered, Shannon set out on a journey to make sense of her loss. From Auschwitz in Poland to war-torn Israel, shelled-out Bosnia, poverty-stricken Romania, and finally to Barcelona, where she first met Sean years before, Shannon charts a path through sorrow towards recovery.
Laurie Lee left his childhood home in the Cotswolds when he was 19, but it remained with him throughout his life until, many years later, he returned for good. This collection brings to life the sights, sounds, landscapes and traditions of his home – from centuries-old May Day rituals to his own patch of garden, and from carol singing in crunching snow to pub conversations and songs. Here too he writes about the mysteries of love, living in wartime Chelsea, Winston Churchill’s wintry funeral and his battle, in old age, to save his beloved Slad Valley from developers. Told with a warm sense of humour and a powerful sense of history, this work brings us a picture of a vanished world.
Alan Bennett’s third collection of prose ‘Keeping On Keeping On’ follows in the footsteps of the phenomenally successfully ‘Writing Home’ and ‘Untold Stories’, each published ten years apart. The latest collection contains Bennett’s peerless diaries 2005 to 2015, reflecting on a decade that saw four premieres at the National Theatre, a West End double-bill transfer, and the films of ‘The History Boys’ and ‘The Lady in the Van’.
As a young man, Roald Dahl’s adventures took him from London to East Africa, until the Second World War began and he became an RAF pilot. In ‘Going Solo’, you’ll read stories of whizzing through the air in a Tiger Moth plane, encounters with deadly green mambas and hungry lions, and the terrible crash that led him to storytelling.
‘Boy’ is the story of Roald Dahl’s very own boyhood, including tales of sweet-shops and chocolate, mean old ladies and a great mouse plot – the inspiration for some of his most marvellous storybooks in the years to come.
Here in notebooks that were never intended for publication, Simenon reflects on his life in some of the most candid revelations ever written. He reflects on his past – his childhood in Liege, the wild parties in Paris and travels around the world – and also examines his motivations and his attitude to work.
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