Woodward, Gerard – The Bell Bookshop

The Vulture

Emma — Thu, 06 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

The vulture, the presiding genius of Gerard Woodward’s collection, is at once sympathetic and awful, intimate and other. Woodward naturally positions himself at uncomfortable borders and thresholds, and in doing so alerts us to the flimsiness of the conceits of home, of family and human culture. Many poets have challenged our lazy habit of addressing nature though the pathetic fallacy; few have had the nerve to consciously embrace it as a subversive strategy, through which we can explore the strange intimacies we share with other life-forms. The Vulture shows insects and animals and plants invade, infect and fuse with us at every turn; elsewhere, the architecture of our lives, our houses, gardens, careers and bodies, are revealed as the provisional drafts they are. No contemporary poet unsettles like Woodward: he does so through no easy surrealism, but instead an extraordinary ability to render our home the alien planet it is, and give conscious voice and vivid shape to the terrible sense of precariousness that lies just below our waking state.

Ill Go To Bed At Noon

Emma — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

It is 1970 in the suburbs of north London and, from the untidy comfort of her crowded house, Colette Jones is watching her older brother go to pieces, drinking himself into oblivion on home-made wine. Colette knows the solace a drink can provide, being partial to an evening at the Red Lion herself. But soon she finds she cannot afford to ignore the destructive effect that alcohol is having on her family, and with gritted teeth Colette is forced to exile the alcoholic son she loves so much from the house. But this act takes its toll and, just as she can’t resist a drink, so she can’t resist allowing Janus back into her life – with heartbreaking consequences for everyone.

Gerard Woodward’s magnificent second novel continues the story of the Joneses, so memorably introduced in August. By way of an odyssey through the pubs, parks and shopping parades of suburban London, it lurches from farce to tragedy as the members of one unforgettable family build and destroy their lives.

August

Emma — Thu, 01 Aug 2002 00:00:00 +0000

Ever since Aldous Jones careened over the handlebars of his bicycle in 1955 and landed next to Farmer Evans’s first field, it has become a tradition for him to take his family camping in Wales. Aldous has started to feel that a certain symbiosis has developed between their North London home and the Welsh village that they only ever see in August. As the years pass, Aldous’s family idyll starts to disintegrate and the farm becomes a place drenched in memory.