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Zusatztext Highly original and beautifully controlled Informationen zum Autor Jessie Greengrass was born in 1982. She studied philosophy in Cambridge and London! where she now lives with her partner and child. Klappentext The twelve stories in this collection range over centuries and roam over the world. At the heart of many of them! though! is a sadness of one kind or another: stories about those who are lonely! or estranged! or out of time. There are hauntings! both literal and metaphorical; and acts of cruelty! of neglect! of penance. Some stories concern themselves with the present! and the mundane circumstances people find themselves in: a worker in a call centre details the small acts of individuation that they all try to enact! to make themselves feel less like automatons; a woman who feels stuck in her life imagines herself in different! self-sufficient jobs - a lighthouse keeper in Wales! or a guard against polar bears in a research station in the Arctic. Some concern themselves with the past: a sixteenth-century alchemist and doctor whose arrogance blinds him to people's dissatisfaction with their lives until he experiences it himself; a nineteenth-century sailor! who is at last made captain when all the rest of the crew dies after running aground on a small island in the South Atlantic; finally! in the title story! a different sailor gives his account - violent! occasionally funny and certainly tragic - of the decline of the Great Auks. A startling collection of stories from a debut British writer. Zusammenfassung WINNER OF THE EDGE HILL SHORT STORY PRIZE 2016 SHORTLISTED FOR THE SUNDAY TIMES/PFD YOUNG WRITER OF THE YEAR AWARD 2016 'Greengrass is undoubtedly that rare thing! a genuinely new and assured voice in prose. Her work is precise! properly moving! quirky and heartfelt' A. L. Kennedy The twelve stories in this startling collection range over centuries and across the world. There are stories about those who are lonely! or estranged! or out of time. There are hauntings! both literal and metaphorical; and acts of cruelty and neglect but also of penance. Some stories concern themselves with the present! and the mundane circumstances in which people find themselves: a woman who feels stuck in her life imagines herself in different jobs - as a lighthouse keeper in Wales! or as a guard against polar bears in a research station in the Arctic. Some stories concern themselves with the past: a sixteenth-century alchemist and doctor! whose arrogance blinds him to people's dissatisfaction with their lives until he experiences it himself. Finally! in the title story! a sailor gives his account - violent! occasionally funny and certainly tragic - of the decline of the Great Auk. ...
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Greengrass is undoubtedly that rare thing, a genuinely new and assured voice in prose. Her work is precise, properly moving, quirky and heartfelt AL Kennedy
