ARTS & CULTURE
Books
It’s always good to buy local, and it’s not only rewarding but crucial at the moment, when many independent businesses may be struggling. This month get your teeth stuck into the following reads, which are all from fabulous publishers based in Norfolk.
Ducks, Newburyport
by Lucy Ellmann
Galley Beggar Press
Based in Norwich, Galley Beggar Press are committed to publishing authors that are innovative and daring, a gamble which has been rewarded many times over, with their authors being both nominated and winning countless prestigious literary awards. Included in these accolades is Ducks, Newburyport, a behemoth of a book that was shortlisted for The Booker Prize in 2019.
Latticing one cherry pie after another, an Ohio housewife tries to bridge the gap between reality and the torrent of meaningless info that is the United States of America. Written mostly in continuous prose – mirroring her stream of consciousness – she worries about her children, her dead parents, African elephants, the bedroom rituals of “happy couples”, Weapons of Mass Destruction, how to hatch an abandoned wood pigeon egg, and everything in between. This wise, funny and scorching indictment of modern-day America is a wonder – and, for every copy bought direct from Galley Beggars, they will donate £1 to ACLU, and their challenge to Donald Trump’s policy of detention and deportation.
Ducks, Newburyport
by Lucy Ellmann
Galley Beggar Press
The Clocks in this house all tell different times
by Xan Brooks
Salt
It’s always good to buy local, and it’s not only rewarding but crucial at the moment, when many independent businesses may be struggling. This month get your teeth stuck into the following reads, which are all from fabulous publishers based in Norfolk.
The Clocks in This House All Tell Different Times
by Xan Brooks
Salt
Although based all over the country with no physical offices, Salt’s registered office is in Cromer. The publisher celebrated its 20th anniversary last year and has been a champion of reading outside of the box since its inception.
Xan Brooks’ masterful debut novel is a dark social-realist fairytale, spotlighting the shadowy underbelly of 1920s England. In the summer of 1923, orphaned Lucy Marsh climbs into the back of an old army truck and is whisked off to the woods north of London – a land haunted by the past, where lost souls and monsters conceal themselves in the trees. In a sunlit clearing she meets the ‘funny men’, a quartet of traumatised war veterans named after Dorothy’s companions in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Here lurks the loved and the damaged, dark forests and darker histories, and the ever-present risk of discovery and violent retribution. If Lucy can only avoid all the hazards on the path, she may just survive into a bright new tomorrow.
Devoured
by Anna Mackmin
Propolis
Promising to promote little-known and under-rated writers while celebrating the beauty of quality printed material, Propolis is the publishing imprint of The Book Hive, a beloved independent bookshop in Norwich. Another dazzling debut, Devoured won Best Novel at the East Anglian Book of the Year Awards 2018. Set in 1973 in deepest rural Norfolk, where Swallow’s Farmhouse is home to Your People, a commune of free-thinkers and poets seeking a better way. But beneath the veneer of a nurturing, alternative lifestyle, an atmosphere of jealousy and threat is pushing utopia towards the brink of its inevitable collapse. Raising herself amidst the eccentricity and chaos is twelve-year-old survivor, Bo, who is desperately preoccupied with her transition into womanhood. With her mute sister, beloved dog and the re-defining force of her emerging appetites, she marches resolutely towards her future, venturing – with hilarious and horrifying results – through the minefield of an adult world built on hypocrisy and misplaced ideals.
