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Posted 20 hours ago

Fen: Stories

£9.9£99Clearance
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I have always enjoyed books set around harsh landscapes (am I the only person to find Wuthering Heights a 'cosy' novel?) and that is part of what this book is, set on the flat english Fenlands, is. It also appeals to the small town/village girl in me. Reading the stories brought the sense of being trapped in a room, slowly The author of Sisters (2020) Everything Under (2018) and Fen (2016). The stories continue to surprise. The first one Starver seems set up to be a standard teenage anorexia story when a girl announces she is going to stop eating, and does. But metamorphosing into an eel is very much not part of the standard script. And is there a link to the last story where a female lighthouse keeper encounters a fish that seems to have almost human qualities. Look out in that one for the representations of male sexuality which wants to possess rather than enjoy.

The plan is to select and read a book every month, then discuss the work during the month’s last week (to give everyone time to read it!). I will post some questions/quotes to get things started, but I would love for this to grow into an open discussion with and between you all. Whenever possible I hope to have the author, or another prominent voice on the subject, join the conversation.

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Daisy Johnson's story collection Fen was unanimously beloved... firmly situating her among the UK's most exciting new voices. -- Marta Bausells * Elle *

I think it’s high time that we think about those stories, and I guess this is what we’re doing with JK Rowling now. We’re thinking about the stories that our children are reading and what they’re going to teach them.” At 29, she is the right age to have read Harry Potter, and remembers that her family would buy two copies of the books and she and her brother and sister would fight over them. “They were an integral part of my reading experience. You know, it was a really important part of a lot of people’s childhoods.” Image: “And now for something completely different” – Monty Python’s Albatross sketch ( Source and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrqW_...) She decided to do ghost stories because of the “amazing” tradition of people sitting around a fire, or in a room, telling their tales.England was the language of breaking and bending and it would suit our mouths better. None of us would ever fall in love with English. We would be safe from that.” She stops, waits, nods. The male-dominated stories we have told ourselves are missing such a large part of human experience that there needs to be space for alternative ones next to them, she explains, a space opened up by the irruption of the uncanny. “It doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be writing about male characters, but women need to appear not only as mothers and partners, they need to appear as I-carrying figures in their own right.”

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