This book was right up my alley: a woman travels to Svalbard (Spitsbergen) to spend a year with her hunter husband and his friend. It is about survival in one of the most extreme places but within that harsh desolate lost-to-the world place, she finds what is holy about the true north. Written in the 1930s by a German woman. She goes there without our modern conveniences. She is brave and resourceful. Beautiful, spare writing.
"Conjures the rasp of the skin runner, the scent of burning blubber and the rippling iridescence of the Northern Lights..." Sara Wheeler, author of Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica
"Ritter manages to articulate all the terrible beauty and elemental power of a polar winter" Gavin Francis, author of Empire Antarctica
In 1934, the painter Christiane Ritter leaves her comfortable life in Austria and travels to the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen, to spend a year there with her husband. She thinks it will be a relaxing trip, a chance to "read thick books in the remote quiet and, not least,…
It's about the forgotten tribe of rural Americans who get screwed over by big pharma (pushing opiates), bad government, and the condescending elite. It's a deeply humane modern take on Dickens. Deserves all the awards.
Demon's story begins with his traumatic birth to a single mother in a single-wide trailer, looking 'like a little blue prizefighter.' For the life ahead of him he would need all of that fighting spirit, along with buckets of charm, a quick wit, and some unexpected talents, legal and otherwise.
In the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, poverty isn't an idea, it's as natural as the grass grows. For a generation growing up in this world, at the heart of the modern opioid crisis, addiction isn't an abstraction, it's neighbours, parents, and friends. 'Family' could mean love, or reluctant foster…
I have told everyone I know to read this book because it is important literature. Set in an obscure town in Ireland on the cusp of getting electricity (1950s) it carries the big weight of humanity with its small lives and big undying, heartbreaking loves. The writing is gorgeous, close to divine. Read it and weep at its impact on your soul.
Shortlisted for Best Novel in the Irish Book Awards
Longlisted for the 2020 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction
From the acclaimed author of Man Booker-longlisted History of the Rain
'Lyrical, tender and sumptuously perceptive' Sunday Times
'A love letter to the sleepy, unhurried and delightfully odd Ireland that is all but gone' Irish Independent
After dropping out of the seminary, seventeen-year-old Noel Crowe finds himself back in Faha, a small Irish parish where nothing ever changes, including the ever-falling rain.
But one morning the rain stops and news reaches the parish - the electricity is finally arriving. With it…
Imagine it is 1934 and your husband spends his winters hunting at the top of the world - Svalbard. Maybe you want to see what draws him there, maybe you are bored at home in Austria, maybe the culture is too cultured, and you want to test yourself in an extremely wild environment - the polar north. You meet him up there. You live in a hut that is the size of a small kitchen You live in three months of no sun, the polar winter darkness. And much of the time you are alone facing harsh storms ( as he often leaves for weeks to go hunting). You don't just survive, you find wonder in the beauty and desolation.
