Submerged
Published on 5. June 2003
Book
Paperback/Softback
256 pages
978-1-86049-928-9 (ISBN)
Description
'Dauntingly fresh' OBSERVER
'Hot, sparkling and exciting' INDEPENDENT
'Mercurial and elusive' ADAM MARS-JONES
A. L. Barker dissects the unnerving emotions of everyday life with the sly humour and exquisite feel for language that prompted Auberon Waugh to declare that she 'writes like an angel and I love her'.
In her tenth collection of stories, Barker unfolds tales of cunning, fancy and shifting alliances. Here a young boy fosters grand illusions; a wife faces broken promises; a dutiful committee woman meets a sparky old gentleman; a witch is drowned; an intruder insinuates himself into a lonely woman's holiday; and commonplace superstition mingles effortlessly with submerged desire.
'Hot, sparkling and exciting' INDEPENDENT
'Mercurial and elusive' ADAM MARS-JONES
A. L. Barker dissects the unnerving emotions of everyday life with the sly humour and exquisite feel for language that prompted Auberon Waugh to declare that she 'writes like an angel and I love her'.
In her tenth collection of stories, Barker unfolds tales of cunning, fancy and shifting alliances. Here a young boy fosters grand illusions; a wife faces broken promises; a dutiful committee woman meets a sparky old gentleman; a witch is drowned; an intruder insinuates himself into a lonely woman's holiday; and commonplace superstition mingles effortlessly with submerged desire.
Reviews / Votes
Marries the deadpan timing of Kingsley Amis at his driest with a tinge of eerie nature-mysticism that brings Iris Murdoch to mind .... Hot, sparkling, exciting -- Boyd Tonkin * Independent * Almost dauntingly fresh -- glancing, mercurial, elusive * Observer * Her prose is like the botanical flower paintings at Kew: 17 washes precede the final glaze -- Jane Gardam * Spectator * Glancing, mercurial, elusive -- Adam Mars-Jones She writes like an angel and I love her -- Auberon Waugh Barker has come full circle, and the short story reigns triumphant -- Elizabeth Berridge * Guardian *More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Little, Brown Book Group
Dimensions
Height: 200 mm
Width: 125 mm
Thickness: 15 mm
Weight
310 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-86049-928-9 (9781860499289)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Person
A. L. Barker left school at sixteen and after the war joined the BBC. Her debut collection of short stories, Innocents, won the Somerset Maugham Prize in 1947 and her novel, John Brown's Body, was shortlisted for the 1969 Booker Prize. The author of eleven novels and ten collections of stories, she died in 2002.