The Adventures of Miss Barbara Pym by Paula Byrne – the ‘modern Jane Austen’?

This excellent cradle-to-grave biography of a much loved novelist who goes in and out of fashion captures her alarming habits and tormented love affairsIn 1971 the author Barbara Pym was at her day job at the International African Institute when she noticed “Mr C” laboriously attacking his lunchtime sandwich with a knife and fork. Pym made a mental note of the detail before asking herself ruefully, “Oh why can’t I write about things like that any more – why is this kind of thing no longer acceptable?” Ten years earlier, Jonathan Cape had dumped her after her sixth book on the grounds that her brand of anthropological observation of English social manners was old lady-ish, dull and didn’t sell. As an extra humiliation, no other publishing house had been interested in picking up Miss Pym: books built on “the daily round of trivial things” could hardly compete with Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal or, if you were feeling fancy, Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. Jonathan Cape had even published John Lennon (Pym liked the Beatles, but still). Clearly there was no place in contemporary literature for Mr C and his oddly formal way with a sandwich.There is nothing unusual about major minor novelists having a disappointing and disproportionate decline, followed by a posthumous flowering in reputation and sales. What’s unusual about Pym is that her phoenix moment came while she was still alive. In 1977 the Times Literary Supplement asked well-known... Continue reading at 'The Guardian'

[ The Guardian | 2021-04-08 06:30:07 UTC ]

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7 of the Year’s Best Debut Novelists on Their First Literary Loves

Every year, we ask The Center for Fiction First Novel Prize Finalists to reminisce about the first book they fell in love with. This year, we asked Finalists to reflect not just on the first story that stole their heart, but the story that seeded curiosity and empathy for the plight of others... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2020-11-17 09:48:30 UTC ]
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Colm Tóibín: How Rules of Craft Inhibit Creativity

Colm Tóibín gives the third installment to the Words Ireland Lecture Series. This modern master discusses the craft of James Joyce—and the idea of craft itself. Is craft a concept more suited to poetry? Could strict ideas around craft actually be a hindrance to novelists and short story writers?... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2020-11-04 09:48:28 UTC ]
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Cape snaps up 'exquisite' memoir from Hewitt

Jonathan Cape has snapped up an “exquisite” memoir about the challenges facing gay men today from acclaimed poet and Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year shortlistee Seán Hewitt. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2020-11-03 07:03:12 UTC ]
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Can a Video Game Express Modernist Values?

AS AN EXPRESSIVE MEDIUM, video games have a strange way of reducing central concepts of modernist art and theory to basic operational elements. The technical specifications of “point of view” that have preoccupied novelists since the turn of the 20th century are crudely literalized within game... Continue reading at Los Angeles Review of Books

[ Los Angeles Review of Books | 2020-10-31 17:00:02 UTC ]
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Crime novelists dish on writing about cops in a moment of reckoning

Writers Rachel Howzell Hall, Attica Locke and Ivy Pochoda talked with Times reporter James Queally for a 2020 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books event. Continue reading at Los Angeles Times

[ Los Angeles Times | 2020-10-24 16:06:42 UTC ]
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Tom Maschler obituary

Booker prize founder and publisher of some of the greats of 20th-century fictionTom Maschler, publisher and managing director of Jonathan Cape and the architect of the Booker prize for fiction, has died aged 87. A glamorous, perma-tanned figure with aquiline features and unruly hair, who dressed... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2020-10-16 17:49:02 UTC ]
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Kassabova moves to Jonathan Cape in two-book deal

Prize-winning writer Kapka Kassabova is moving to Jonathan Cape in a two-book deal, with first title, Elixir, exploring the human hunger for healing and a search for a cure. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2020-09-24 14:09:10 UTC ]
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Cape wins music icon Neneh Cherry’s 'powerful' memoir in 14-way auction

Jonathan Cape has acquired Swedish musician Neneh Cherry’s memoir, A Thousand Threads, in a 14-way auction. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2020-09-16 11:56:22 UTC ]
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Most diverse Booker prize shortlist ever is also almost all American

With no room for Hilary Mantel’s conclusion to her Wolf Hall trilogy, the six finalists also include four debutsHilary Mantel will not win a third Booker prize with the final novel in her Thomas Cromwell trilogy, after American writers made a near clean sweep of this year’s shortlist.With four... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2020-09-15 12:21:07 UTC ]
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Vintage to publish 'radical reworking' of Harari's Sapiens in graphic novel style

Vintage imprint Jonathan Cape will publish Sapiens: A Graphic History, a "radical reworking" in graphic novel style of Yuval Noah Harari's bestseller Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2020-09-02 08:54:07 UTC ]
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Cape signs Lyster on global water crisis

Jonathan Cape has signed a “radical” in-depth exploration of the global water crisis by South African journalist Rosa Lyster. Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2020-08-26 02:54:26 UTC ]
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Remember when famous writers used to shill for consumer products?

Ah, yes, the good old days: when novelists lent their faces and testimonials to advertisers hoping to sell tires, or a certain kind of beer, or fancy watches. It’s something you don’t see very much anymore, because we writers have become too principled to participate in advertising campaigns.... Continue reading at Literrary Hub

[ Literrary Hub | 2020-08-19 17:14:06 UTC ]
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With book tours scrapped, authors are finding new ways to connect with their readers

Chris Bohjalian, Mary Kay Andrews and other novelists have turned to Zoom and Facebook Live to find their audience. Continue reading at The Washington Post

[ The Washington Post | 2020-08-19 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Poets and novelists have been writing about life under COVID-19 for more than a century

From 'islands of pain' to the 'peril of exposure,' writers have captured the fear, emptiness and despair that characterize life during the current pandemic, writes a poet and English scholar. Continue reading at The Conversation

[ The Conversation | 2020-08-17 12:24:39 UTC ]
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Carty-Williams, O'Leary and Winterson shortlisted for Comedy Women in Print Prize

Novelists including Candice Carty-Williams, Beth O'Leary and Jeanette Winterson are in the running for the Comedy Women in Print Prize (CWIP). Continue reading at The Bookseller

[ The Bookseller | 2020-08-16 13:06:20 UTC ]
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Reclaim Her Name: why we should free Australia's female novelists from their male pseudonyms

The Women's Prize for Fiction has just published 25 literary works by female authors with their real names for the first time. Could we do the same for Miles Franklin and Henry Handel Richardson here? Continue reading at The Conversation

[ The Conversation | 2020-08-13 06:43:53 UTC ]
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Alan Dershowitz claims a fictional lawyer defamed him. The implications for novelists are very real.

“Make Russia Great Again” and “Rodham” are two recent novels that benefit from blending fact and fiction. Continue reading at The Washington Post

[ The Washington Post | 2020-08-06 12:00:00 UTC ]
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Where are the hotshot British male novelists? BAME authors may know

Ashley Hickson-Lovence, Abir Mukherjee, Courttia Newland, Guy Gunaratne, Paul Mendez and Okechukwu Nzelu on why British writers of colour are left out of the conversationAfter this week’s Booker prize longlist was announced, the Times asked “Where are the new male hotshot novelists?” I was... Continue reading at The Guardian

[ The Guardian | 2020-07-31 14:10:18 UTC ]
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