Scudamore, James – The Bell Bookshop

English monsters

Emma — Thu, 04 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

‘James Scudamore is now a force in the English novel’ Hilary Mantel

‘A very impressive novel’ Sarah Moss

When ten-year-old Max is sent to boarding school, his idyllic childhood comes to an abrupt end. Away from the freedom of his grandfather’s farm, a world of rules and punishment awaits. But so too does the companionship of a close-knit group of classmates.

Years later, as Max and his friends face down adulthood, a dark secret from their schooldays is revealed, drawing them together in unforeseen ways. Who knew what, and when? And who now wants to see justice done?

‘Breathtakingly good’ Observer

‘Dark, tender, troubling’ Guardian

Wreaking

Emma — Thu, 24 Jul 2014 00:00:00 +0000

‘People who say there aren’t any brilliant literary novels about contemporary England anymore have obviously never read this.’ Irvine Welsh

A brilliantly imagined and unsettling novel from the award-winning author of Heliopolis and The Amnesia Clinic

Three solitary characters remember their shared past in a sprawling, derelict psychiatric hospital on the English coast: a turbulent summer in the aftermath of the hospital’s closure that culminated in a shocking, life-altering accident. But the more each tries to comprehend the past, the more elusive it becomes. Wreaking is an intricate, labyrinthine novel about the opiate power of place, the fragility of sanity and the fickle nature of memory.

Heliopolis

Emma — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000

As a child Ludo is plucked out of the shantytown where he was born and transported to a world of languid, cosseted luxury. Now twenty-seven, he works high above the above the sprawling metropolis of SÃ£o Paulo for a vacuous ‘communications company’. But this is not his world, and this is not a simple rags-to-riches story: Ludo’s destiny moves him around like a chess piece, showing him both extremities of opulent excess and abject poverty, taking him to the brink of madness and brutality.

By the author of The Amnesia Clinic and winner of the Somerset Maugham Award.