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The 2009 Tenth Anniversary Birmingham Book Festival has now finished. We had a great tenth year, with some amazing and inspiring events. We have been blogging about them - see the tab on the left. If you are looking for details about our 2010 festival, join our mailing list and we will let you know as soon as programming is underway. We are also planning some great SPRING events so check back here soon for more information.
COMING UP:
EVERY NEW IDEA - POETRY WORKSHOP -Saturday 6th February 2010 - with Roz Goddard. Venue: Birmingham Central Library (Shakespeare Memorial Room) Date: Saturday 6 February Time: 10am-12.30pm Price: £25 (£20 concs) Call 0121 303 2323 to book. We all occupy writing territories, some grown dusty with intensive farming. This workshop will look at ways we can re-seed the ground we love to produce fresh, exciting poems. You will look at startling beginnings, expressing feelings in dazzling images and moving beyond your habitual holding bay.
BOOK LAUNCH: The Birmingham Book Festival is pleased to announce a launch event for Clare Morrall’s fourth novel, The Man Who Disappeared.
The Man Who Disappeared is Clare Morrall’s fourth novel, a strong story of deception, loss and discovery. Kate’s life is comfortably average: a nice house, three children and a loving husband with a good job. Or so she thinks. When she is detained by police at an airport in Canada she is shocked to learn they are looking for her husband, Felix, who is accused of money-laundering. They assume she will know where he is. She doesn’t. He has disappeared.
Gradually, Kate is forced to confront a new and frightening reality. She must adjust not only to a precarious, hand-to-mouth existence with her children, but also to the idea that what came before was nothing but a lie. How could Felix have abandoned them so brutally? And why? The Man Who Disappeared confirms Clare Morrall’s place in the foremost rank of literary novelists writing in Britain today.
Clare Morrall lives in Birmingham and has written four novels. She has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2003 and for the British Book Awards ‘Newcomer of the Year’ award in 2004.
Come along to this launch, enjoy a glass of wine, hear excerpts from the new book, get your signed copy and meet the author.
Entry is free but please confirm attendance via Sara Beadle : This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it / 0121 246 2792 Sponsored by Sceptre. Supported by The Electric Cinema, Birmingham
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I wasn't disappointed, although I have to say the book did take a while to get going, for me. Once past the initial exploration of the book's main characters - young Charlie, his mother, and the town's new female doctor, it settled nicely into the painful disintegration of Charlie's family life, before moving into his and his heartbroken mother's respective lonelinesses. What the book does very well is harness the bleakness Lydia (Charlie's mother) faces, the lack of choices, the genuine struggle. It contrasts well with the relief Charlie, and later Lydia, find in the Doctor's house. The bees, Charlie's fascination, are a nice vehicle for the solitude and silence of these characters, bringing out the culture of keeping quiet that permeated Fifties society. This serves to subtly bring to our attention the theme of homophobia rather than assaulting us with it earlier on. In fact, in the end, the story revolves as much around class as it does around the relationship between the two women.
Charlie is well drawn - a harried young boy with plenty of sense, if not a clear understanding, of the world they are living in.
In short, this is a complex emotional plot wound into a very accessible, appealing story. Definitely one to read and recommend.
Posted on Mon 08 Feb 2010 09:16:57 PST