And Other Stories – The Bell Bookshop

Fifty Forgotten Books

Emma — Tue, 13 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Fifty Forgotten Books is a very special sort of bookabout books, by a great bookman and for book-people of all ages and levels ofexperience. Not quite literary criticism, not quite an autobiography, it is atonce a guided tour through the dusty backrooms of long vanished second-handshops, a love letter to bookshops and bookselling and a browser’s dream wishlist of often overlooked and unloved novels, short story collections, poetrycollections and works of non-fiction. In these pages, R. B. Russell,publisher of Tartarus Press, doesn’t only discuss the books, but explains whatthey have meant to him over time, thus forming an oblique, partial memoir of hislife as a writer and publisher for over thirty years . . . and a bibliophilefor many more. Here is living proof of how literature, books and bookcollecting can be an intrinsic part of one’s personal, professional andimaginative life, as not only a solitary act, but a social one, resulting in treasuredfriendships, experiences and loves one might never, otherwise, have enjoyed.

Love

Emma — Thu, 07 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

'Love' is the story of Vibeke and Jon, a mother and son who have just moved to a small place in the north of Norway. It's the day before Jon's birthday, and a travelling carnival has come to the village. Jon goes out to sell lottery tickets for his sports club, and Vibeke is going to the library. From here on we follow the two individuals on their separate journeys through a cold winter's night - while a sense of uneasiness grows. 'Love' illustrates how language builds its own reality, and thus how mother and son can live in completely separate worlds. This distance is found not only between human beings, but also within each individual. This novel shows how such distance may have fatal consequences.

Swimming home

Emma — Thu, 23 Mar 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Selected for the 2012 Man Booker Prize shortlist

As he arrives with his family at the villa in the hills above Nice, Joe sees a body in the swimming pool. But the girl is very much alive. She is Kitty Finch: a self-proclaimed botanist with green-painted fingernails, walking naked out of the water and into the heart of their holiday. Why is she there? What does she want from them all? And why does Joe’s enigmatic wife allow her to remain? Profound and thrilling, Swimming Home reveals how the most devastating secrets are the ones we keep from ourselves.