Novels by Poets
Selected by the Bookshop
Thomas Hardy once claimed that it was ‘better to fail in poetry than to succeed in prose’. We’re not sure which is better, so for our latest set of staff picks we’ve selected our favourite novels written by poets who, like Hardy, have succeeded in both.
Recommended by John
After publishing some of the liveliest poetry and novels of the 60s, Tonks vanished utterly from the literary scene (she’d become part of a fundamentalist Christian cult); Bloodaxe republished her poetry after her death in 2014, and her novels too are now all back in print. Businessman as Lovers, a joyfully slight summer farce, is the best of them for my money - a perfect beach read.
From the publisher:
Kate, a grieving, semi-alcoholic film student, invites an elderly woman to take part in an oral-history documentary. Jean declines, but makes her a bizarre counter-offer: if Kate can stay sober for four days, she will tell her a story. If…
From the publisher:
Michaelmas term, 1940. 18-year-old John Kemp has come down from Lancashire to Oxford University to begin his scholarship studying English. But when he invents an imaginary sister to win the attention of a rich but unreliable…
From the publisher:
‘What it said to me was that I was here again, I was back, back from the great nowhere of somewhere else, returned, all too officially, to the whereabouts of Moffa.’After a year away, a woman arrives back in her hometown to keep…
From the publisher:
In Luke Kennard's audacious new novel, a penniless and out-of-work actor picks up a job working for Dr Blend, a university professor who is conducting a psychological experiment. How will Dr Blend's students react to someone zipped into on…
From the publisher:
'Patricia Lockwood is the voice of a generation' Namita Gokhale'A masterpiece' Guardian'I really admire and love this book' Sally Rooney'An intellectual and emotional rollercoaster' Daily Mail'I can't remember the last…
From the publisher:
The thrilling debut novel of the summer from the Granta Best Young British NovelistAn Observer Best Debut of the YearA Granta Best Young British Novelist‘I loved this book’ JULIA…
From the publisher:
She is a curator, who spends her time dressing the rooms of historic buildings to bring them to life. But in the lush private quarters of a medieval palace, she finds herself so transfixed by the reign of an almost-forgotten King that the…
Recommended by John
Durrell’s third novel, published when he was at the precocious age of 26, is a wild Bohemian knockabout; Death Gregory, Lawrence Lucifer and Madame About romp through interwar London. Phillip Toynbee called it ‘richly obscene, energetically morbid, very often very funny indeed’, which is about right.
From the publisher:
'The first of Hardy's great novels, and the first to sound the tragic note for which his best fiction is remembered' Margaret DrabbleThomas Hardy's novel of swift passion and slow courtship is imbued with evocative descriptions of rural…
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