Author: GRB

We would like to offer our hearty congratulations to Barbara Kingsolver – winner of the 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction with her novel Demon Copperhead.

This is the tale of Demon Copperhead: our hero. A boy with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-coloured hair, bucket-loads of charm and a talent or two the world is yet to discover. Born to a teenaged single mother in a single wide trailer, life is not set fair for Demon as he escorts us on this, his journey through the modern perils of foster care, athletic success and addiction, the dizzying highs of true love, and the crushing losses that can accompany it. But Demon is a fighter, a survivor.

We have a stack of copies in the shop, which will of course go quickly, and more on the way. You can reserve your copy here if you want to get your hands on it sooner rather than later.

Happy reading,

Tom, Leah & Joe

We are quickly closing in on one of our favourite moments in the year – Independent Bookshop Week, which starts on Saturday 17th June and runs through until the end of Saturday 24th June.

Each year we use this as an opportunity to collaborate with an indie publisher we love in order to bring them more exposure, and to get more of their books into your hands. Small bookshops and small presses are natural allies – we don’t have huge budgets for marketing or advertising, we rely on word of mouth and the loyalty of our customers. We each choose our books extremely carefully, knowing that reputation is crucial for us, and that readers must be able to trust us to bring them writing of the highest quality, without a thought for the vagueries of national best-seller lists, or the mercenary cynicism of algorithms.

This year we are really thrilled to be collaborating with Fitzcarraldo Editions to cover our shop in the gloriously elegant, crisp white and blue of their iconic covers.

Fitzcarraldo represents the epitome of what I love about a small, independent publisher – pick a title at random from their list and read it, and you can rely on it to be interesting. There is a very good chance you will find it not just interesting, but utterly compelling and quite possibly totally brilliant. There is even a very respectable chance that you will be reading something by a recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature (three of their authors have so far won the award – Svetlana Alexievich, Olga Tokarczuk and Annie Ernaux).

You can have a thorough explore on our website here.

So far this year, I have read the following books published by Fitzcarraldo, all of which I would (or have done so already) heartily recommend: Mild Vertigo by Mieko Kanai, translated by Polly Barton; This is Not Miami by Fernanda Melchor, translated by Sophie Hughes; The Private Lives of Trees & also Bonsai by Alejandro Zambra, both translated by Megan McDowell; Porn: An Oral History by Polly Barton.

Fitzcarraldo are kindly sending us some loot to give away when you buy one of their books from us during this IBW period. This will include some tote bags, some proof copies of books, postcards & bookmarks. There will be a limited amount of these, so it will be strictly a first come first served and while stocks last kind of situation. The real treat, of course, will be in picking up some brilliant new writing.

We very much hope that those of you who have not read anything from their extraordinary list will consider diving in. We also know there are some ardent Fitzcarraldo fans out there among our customers, and we hope you will enjoy this excuse to indulge further.

As one last little inducement, we have a booklet of £5 National Book Token E-vouchers to give away for the first customers to visit during Indie Bookshop Week (1 voucher per customer, while they last).

Earlier this week we received the immensely welcome news that Chilean novelist Alejandro Zambra would be in Bristol this month and would be available for an event. Not only that, but Megan McDowell, who brilliantly translated The Private Lives of Trees as well as a number of Zambra’s other books, would be with him and would also be available. When we finally regained control of ourselves we immediately said we would be over the moon to host the two of them in conversation – in the shop on Monday 12th June, at 7pm. Tickets & more info are available here.

Earlier this year I wrote about The Private Lives of Trees which was then, and remains now, one of the best things I’ve read so far this year (and beyond). At the time I said it is ‘an absolutely brilliant novella about how our lives become intertwined with stories. It is richly imagined, inventive, and at the same time utterly human. It’s not an easy balance to strike, but it does it beautifully.’ I’m very much looking forward to re-reading this wonderful book, as well as deep diving further into Zambraland.

It is a very wonderful thing to have a talk featuring both author and translator – it allows for so much interesting exploration of the book, as well as the writing, translating & publishing processes. We’re enormously excited! Availability is limited for this one & tickets will go quickly so do please snap your place up quickly if you are interested.

On Tuesday night the winner of the Booker International Prize 2023 was announced – congratulations to Georgie Gospodinov & Angela Rodel, author and translator of Time Shelter. Inevitably, all our copies have immediately been snapped up but more are on the way soon once the publisher has reprinted. Place an order via our website to reserve your copy as soon as we receive stock.

We read Time Shelter for the first meeting of our new Translated Literature book club & it was a thoroughly facinating conversation about a complicated and enjoyable book. It was not the book I expected it to be – in fact throughout its 300 pages it repeatedly defied my expectations about the kind of story I thought I was reading. The book’s central obessions (and they really are obsessions) are time, nostalgia & forgetting – those most slippery of subjects. Gospodinov works across different registers, at points progressing the narrative or using one of the various rich set pieces to play out curious events, and at points it becomes a tapestry of musings while the characters and any sense of narrative simply fall away. It’s a thoroughly engrossing, challenging & enjoyable read and it comes highly recommended.

We are delighted to announce a new event:

The celebrated journalist and broadcaster, Kieran Yates is coming to Gloucester Road to talk about her essential new book, All the Houses I’ve Ever Lived In. She will be joining us at Future Leap Event Space on June 8th at 7pm.
We’ve all had our share of dodgy landlords, mould and awkward house shares. But journalist Kieran Yates has had more than most: by the age of twenty-five she’d lived in twenty different houses across the country, from council estates in London to car showrooms in rural Wales.

In prose that sparkles with humour and warmth, Yates charts the heartbreaks and joys of a life spent navigating the chaos of the housing system. Drawing on interviews with marginalised tenants across the country and the stories behind our interiors, she explores the unexpected ways we can fight back – finding beauty in the wreckage of a broken system, friendships in cramped housing conditions, and home even in the most fragile circumstances.

All the Houses I’ve Ever Lived In is at once a rallying cry for change, a gorgeous coming-of-age story and a love letter to home in all its forms.

Kieran Yates is a London-based journalist, broadcaster and editor who has been writing about culture, technology and politics for over 10 years. She’s written everywhere from the Guardian, FADER, VICE, The Independent and beyond, had an acclaimed monthly column at VICE titled ‘British Values’, was nominated for Culture Writer of the Year in 2016 and regularly hosts events and panels discussing issues across music, politics, and news.

Kieran contributed to the award-winning book of essays, The Good Immigrant in 2017 about immigrant stories in the UK, where she wrote about ‘Going Home’. In 2015 she started a fanzine called ‘British Values’, a political satire and culture magazine that celebrates immigrant communities in the UK. She is the co-author of Generation Vexed: What the English Riots Didn’t Tell Us About Your Nation’s Youth.

Tickets are £5, available here or in store.