Spill Simmer Falter Wither [electronic resource] :

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-- The Guardian It is springtime, and an isolated man shunned by his village has forged a connection with the one-eyed dog he’s taken into his tightly shuttered life. But as their friendship grows, their small seaside community becomes suspicious. And when an accident is misconstrued as menace, this pair of outcasts must take to the road. As they travel from town to town, sleeping in the car and subsisting on canned spaghetti, the man confides in One Eye the strange and melancholy story of his life. With its gorgeously poetic prose, S -- The Guardian, UK

Verlag:

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt,

Datum:

2016

Digitales Format:

CLOUDLIBRARY EPUB

Sprache:

Englisch

Zusammenfassung

An old loner and his misfit dog spend a year on the road in this acclaimed Irish novel of "singing prose [and] two unlikely Beckettian wanderers" ( The Guardian , UK).

It is springtime, and an isolated man shunned by his village has forged a connection with the one-eyed dog he's taken into his tightly shuttered life. But as their friendship grows, their small seaside community becomes suspicious. And when an accident is misconstrued as menace, this pair of outcasts must take to the road. As they travel from town to town, sleeping in the car and subsisting on canned spaghetti, the man confides in One Eye the strange and melancholy story of his life.

With its gorgeously poetic prose, S pill Simmer Falter Wither has garnered enthusiastic praise in its native Ireland, where the Irish Times pointed to Baume's "astonishing power with language" and praised it as "a novel bursting with brio, braggadocio and bite."

"Baume has a rare ability to look afresh at muted scenes and ordinary objects... the book hums with its own distinctiveness."-- The Guardian , UK

Rezensionen (5)

Publisher's Weekly-Rezension

A solitary misfit opens up to his one-eyed dog in this debut novel. Ray describes himself as old (he's 57), shabbily dressed, and sketchily bearded, pitching and clomping when he walks. He first sees the dog in an animal shelter advertisement: a grisly photo of a mangled canine face. The kennel keeper says the dog attacks other dogs; its scars suggest it was used for badger hunting. Ray is familiar with abuse: his father, understanding Ray is "not right-minded," raised him in confined isolation. Ray reads, drives, and knows he's not a regular person. Following his father's death, he remains in his father's house alone until he adopts the dog he calls One Eye. When One Eye attacks another dog, incurring the owner's wrath, Ray takes One Eye on the road, traveling from one Irish village to another, sleeping in the car. By the time they return home, they have spent a year together, and their friendship is fixed. Baume's storytelling can be indirect. She never mentions Ray's name, only that he's named for a sunbeam or a sand shark. Nor does she specify Ray's impairment. As a narrator, he shows observation skills, appreciation for landscape, and awareness of fear and sadness. For One Eye, he's full of empathy. Baume's debut is notable for its rhythmic language, sensory imagery (especially visuals and smells), and second-person narrative directed at an animal. She is brutal detailing brutality, lyrical contemplating land and sea, and at her best evoking the connection between man and dog. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist-Rezension

*Starred Review* A year in the life of a 57-year-old man and his dog doesn't sound like much, but Baume has elevated this simple conceit to something elegant, heartbreaking, and inspiring. The man is an orphan, living in his father's house with no especially fond memories of his past, no friends or family in his present, and no excitement or enthusiasm for the future. The dog is a one-eyed mutt with an absolute hatred of other dogs, due to be euthanized in a matter of hours. The man rescues the mutt in the hopes that the dog, now christened ONEEYE, can help keep his home clear of vermin. ONEEYE succeeds admirably at this task, but the man soon realizes that their now-intertwined lives have become fuller, richer, and infinitely more difficult. Fans of Garth Stein's The Art of Racing in the Rain (2008) will adore this glimpse inside a very unusual relationship between two very unusual creatures, but the lyric, lilting style of Baume's voice will endear even animal non-lovers to her thrilling and transformative story. With echoes of Mark Haddon's narrative style and a healthy dose of empathy for the lost and lonely among us, Spill Simmer Falter Wither is a superlative first novel.--Turza, Stephanie Copyright 2016 Booklist

Guardian Review

One man and his dog embark on a road trip in this haunted tale of isolation and belonging, longlisted for the Guardian first book award From Robert Grainier in Denis Johnson's Train Dreams to Sam Marsdyke in Ross Raisin's God's Own Country, literature abounds with rural loners, characters whose isolation is as palpable to the reader as it is central to their own narrative. Irish writer Sara Baume begins her debut novel not with the outsider who dominates it, but with the dog who becomes his sole companion. One Eye lost his other eye badger hunting, and as the book opens is adopted by a man who hints at, but never tells us, his name, admitting, "I'm 57. Too old for starting over, too young for giving up." Man and dog live in a nameless seaside town, in a cluttered, junk-filled house, where black mould on the walls has "mushroomed into a reverse constellation". The dog is not just company, but a complicated beast with its own demons. After a violent incident, the pair leave town, fearing a visit from the dog warden. But this is no one-man-and-his dog Huck Finn-style road trip. If anything, the journey that comprises the book -- sleeping in the car, surviving on spaghetti hoops -- is an anti-odyssey, but it provides the skeletal framework for a story that uncomfortably examines social isolation. The narrator unburdens himself to One Eye, explaining who he is, and what he isn't: "I haven't fought in any wars or fallen in love. I've never even punched a man or held a woman's hand ... I lie down and let life leave its footprints on me." To capture this constrained setting and quiet character requires specific skills, which Baume (pictured) has in spades: the book has been longlisted for the Guardian first book award. The protagonist feels so familiar that you could be forgiven for thinking you'd just passed him on the way to shops. Divided into the four sections of the title, which mimic the seasons ("Spill" for spring, "Simmer" for summer, and so on), the story spans a year. As the odd couple spin through small towns and boreens, the narrator unspools his chaotic childhood, revealing an upbringing devoid of love and sustenance. Once, he was abandoned at the side of a country road at night; only one of his childhood birthdays was celebrated. He also has a secret, but it requires this trip to shake it to the surface. Again and again, Baume invokes nature to frame the book's relationships: the narrator compares caring for One Eye to nurturing a nettle, just as he was "his father's nettle... a son fit only to be kept indoors ... where there's nothing to sting but himself". It's a claustrophobic, affecting debut and Baume has a rare ability to look afresh at muted scenes and ordinary objects, making even the occasionally florid flashes forgivable. Robins have "orange-red blushed breasts as though they've been water-boarded by molten amber". The simple act of One Eye urinating is imbued with a strange beauty: "Now you cock your leg and saturate a tuft of winter heliotrope with sweltering piss." The haunted tone persists as we follow a man sinking under the weight of his own fear and isolation. One comparison is Kjersti Skomsvold's insular Norwegian novel The Faster I Walk, the Smaller I Am, but Spill Simmer Falter Wither is more kinetic. The voice is incessant; the ongoing chatter, internal and external, a frantic attempt to find resolution. There is emotional stasis, certainly, but man and dog engage with the natural world, even if they eschew contact with actual people. It's not easy to tell such a sparse tale, to be so economic with story, but the book hums with its own distinctiveness, presenting in singing prose an unforgettable landscape peopled by two unlikely Beckettian wanderers, where hope is not yet lost. * To order Spill Simmer Falter Wither for [pound]5.99 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over [pound]10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of [pound]1.99. - Sinead Gleeson.

Kirkus-Rezension

Ray, a disabled man, adopts One Eye, a rescue dog injured while badger baiting, in this debut novel. We get to know Ray as he speaks to One Eye: "I'm fifty-seven. Too old for starting over, too young for giving up." We learn he leaves his lonely home on the coast of Ireland once a week to visit the post office and the grocery store. He used to attend Mass, but he hasn't been lately. He's a reader and uses the "mobile library." Ray is alone and both appears and feels different than other people. He tells One Eye, "Sometimes I see the sadness in you, the same sadness that's in me.My sadness isn't a way I feel but a thing trapped inside the walls of my flesh, like a smog." In another passage he explains, "The nasturtiums have it figured out, how survival's just a matter of filling the gaps between sun up and sun down." One Eye is a good companionhe gets Ray out of the house morebut he's trained to bite badgers and not let go. Unfortunately, he does the same thing to other dogs, which propels a sad, quiet story into a desperate one. The novel is set in an unspecified time before mobile phones, but even if it's meant to be a few decades ago, it seems unreal that Ray could grow up without attending school and without any social services intervention. Baume perhaps means to make a statement about marginalized people who live unnoticed in the midst of their communities, but something doesn't quite ring true in Ray's isolation. The vague, sad ending doesn't help. Beautiful prose renders a tragically ugly picture with only the loyal but doomed love between man and dog to redeem it. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Library Journal-Rezension

A chance sighting of a flyer in a shop window in an Irish village leads a solitary man to a connection-probably the first one of his life-with a dog at the local pound. The nameless narrator leads a lonely life, isolated by his disabilities and his late father's indifference. Now in his 50s and still alone, he is struck by the picture of a dog missing an eye. Adopting the canine now named "One Eye," the man begins to step outside the narrow confines of his life, taking long walks and drives with his new companion. On one of these outings, a brief, accidental encounter with another dog and owner propels the two friends on a long meandering odyssey around the country as the man finally realizes the depths of his feelings for his first and only true friend. VERDICT This haunting debut novel by an award-winning Irish short story writer will appeal to readers who don't mind a little darkness in their dog stories. The detailed and almost poetic descriptions of the natural world as the seasons change add an element of enchantment to this lovely story. [See Prepub Alert, 9/28/15; this title was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award 2015.-Ed.]-Dan Forrest, Western -Kentucky Univ. Libs., Bowling Green © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Auszüge

PROLOGUE He is running, running, running. And it's like no kind of running he's ever run before. He's the surge that burst the dam and he's pouring down the hillslope, channelling through the grass to the width of his widest part. He's tripping into hoof-rucks. He's slapping groundsel stems down dead. Dandelions and chickweed, nettles and dock. This time, there's no chance for sniff and scavenge and scoff. There are no steel bars to end his lap, no chain to jerk at the limit of its extension, no bellowing to trick and bully him back. This time, he's further than he's ever seen before, past every marker along the horizon line, every hump and spork he learned by heart. It's the season of digging out. It's a day of soft rain. There's wind enough to tilt the slimmer trunks off kilter and drizzle enough to twist the long hairs on his back to a mop of damp curls. There's blood enough to gush into his beard and spatter his front paws as they rise and plunge. And there's a hot, wet thing bouncing against his neck. It's the size of a snailshell and it makes a dim squelch each time it strikes. It's attached to some gristly tether dangling from some leaked part of himself, but he cannot make out the what nor the where of it. Were he to stop, were he to examine the hillslope and hoof-rucks and groundsel and dandelions and chickweed and nettles and dock, he'd see how the breadth of his sight span has been reduced by half and shunted to his right side, how the left is pitch black until he swivels his head. But he doesn't stop, and notices only the cumbersome blades, the spears of rain, the upheaval of tiny insects and the blood spilling down the wrong side of his coat, the outer when it ought to be the inner. He is running, running, running. And there's no course or current to deter him. There's no impulse from the root of his brain to the roof of his skull which says other than RUN. He is One Eye now. He is on his way. SPILL You find me on a Tuesday, on my Tuesday trip to town. You're Sellotaped to the inside pane of the jumble shop window. A photograph of your mangled face and underneath an appeal for a COMPASSIONATE & TOLERANT OWNER. A PERSON WITHOUT OTHER PETS & WITHOUT CHILDREN UNDER FOUR. The notice shares street-facing space with a sheepskin overcoat, a rubberwood tambourine, a stuffed wigeon and a calligraphy set. The overcoat's sagged and the tambourine's punctured. The wigeon's trickling sawdust and the calligraphy set's likely to be missing inks or nibs or paper, almost certainly the instruction leaflet. There's something sad about the jumble shop, but I like it. I like how it's a tiny refuge of imperfection. I always stop to gawp at the window display and it always makes me feel a little less horrible, less strange. But I've never noticed the notices before. There are several, each with a few lines of text beneath a hazy photograph. Altogether they form a hotchpotch of pleading eyes, foreheads worried into furry folds, tails frozen to a hopeful wag. The sentences underneath use words like NEUTERED, VACCINATED, MICROCHIPPED, CRATE-TRAINED. Every wet nose in the window is alleged to be searching for its FOREVER HOME. I'm on my way to purchase a box-load of incandescent bulbs because I can't bear the dimness of the energy savers, how they hesitate at first and then build to a parasitic humming so soft it hoaxes me into thinking some part of my inner ear has cracked, or some vital vessel of my frontal lobe. I stop and fold my hands and examine the fire-spitting dragon painted onto the tambourine's stretched skin and the wigeon's bright feet bolted to a hunk of ornamental cedar, its wings pinioned to a flightless expansion. And I wonder if the calligraphy set is missing its instruction leaflet. You're Sellotaped to the bottommost corner. Your photograph is the least distinct and your face is the most grisly. I have to bend down to inspect you and as I move, the shadows shift with my bending body and blank out the glass of the jumble shop window, and I see myself instead. I see my head sticking out of your back like a bizarre excrescence. I see my own mangled face peering dolefully from the black. The shelter is a forty-minute drive and three short, fat cigarettes from home. It occupies a strip of land along the invisible line at which factories and housing estates give way to forests and fields. There are rooftops on one side, treetops on the other. Concrete underfoot and chainlink fencing all around, its PVC-coated diamonds rattling with the anxious quivers of creatures MISTREATED, ABANDONED, ABUSED. Adjacent to the diamonds, there's a flat-headed building with unsound walls and a cavity block wedged under each corner. A signpost rises from the cement. RECEPTION, it says, REPORT ON ARRIVAL. I'm not the kind of person who is able to do things. I don't feel very good about climbing the steps and pushing the door, but I don't feel very good about disobeying instructions either. My right hand finds my left hand and they hold each other. Now I step up and they knock as one. The door falls open. Inside there's a woman sitting behind a large screen between two filing cabinets. There's something brittle about her. She seems small in proportion to the screen, but it isn't that. It's in the way the veins of each temple rise through her skin; it's in the way her eyelids are the colour of a climaxing bruise. 'Which one?' she says and shows me a sheet of miniature photographs. As I place the tip of my index finger against the tip of your miniaturised nose, she ever-so-slightly smiles. I sign a form and pay a donation. The brittle woman speaks into a walkie-talkie and now there's a kennel keeper waiting outside the flat-headed office. I hadn't imagined it might be so uncomplicated as this. He's a triangular man. Loafy shoulders tapering into flagpole legs, the silhouette of a root vegetable. He's carrying a collar and leash. He swings them at his side and talks loudly as he guides me through the shelter. 'That cur's for the injection I said, soon's I saw him, and wouldn'cha know, straight off he sinks his chompers into a friendly fella's cheek and won't let go. That fella, there.' The kennel keeper points to a copper-coated cocker spaniel in a cage with a baby blanket and a burger-shaped squeak toy. The spaniel looks up as we pass and I see a pair of pink punctures in the droop of his muzzle. 'Vicious little bugger. Had to prise his jaws loose and got myself bit in the process. Won't be learning his way out of a nature like that. Another day, y'know, and he'd a been put down.' I nod, even though the kennel keeper isn't looking at me. I picture him at home in a house where all of the pot plants belong to his wife and the front garden's been tarmacked into an enormous driveway. His walls are magnolia and his kitchen cupboards are stocked with special toasting bread and he uses the bread not only for toasting, but for everything. 'Any good for ratting?' I say. 'Good little ratter alright,' the kennel keeper says, 'there he is, there,' and now I see he is pointing at you. You're all on your own in a solitary confinement kennel beside the recycling bins. There's a stench of old meat, of hundreds and hundreds of desiccated globules stuck to the inside of carelessly rinsed cans. There's dust and sweet wrappers and cardboard cups whirling in from the whoomph of traffic passing on the road. There's the sound of yipping and whinging from around the corner and out of sight. It's a sad place, and you are smaller than I expected. You growl as the kennel keeper grabs you by the scruff and buckles the collar, but you don't snap. And when you walk, there's no violence, no malice in the way you move. There's nothing of the pariah I expected. You are leaning low, nearly dragging your body along the ground, as though carrying a great lump of fear. 'Easy now,' the kennel keeper tells you. 'Easy.' Excerpted from Spill Simmer Falter Wither by Sara Baume All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.