Ashland & Vine
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Vintage Publishing
Published:1st Feb '18
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
The Costa prize-winning poet and novelist is back with a remarkable novel about love grief, and the power of unlikely friendships
Kate, a grieving, semi-alcoholic film student, invites an elderly woman to take part in an oral-history documentary.
Gradually, Jean offers a heart-breaking account, not only of her own history – a lost lover, a family scarred by war – but of the American century itself;
‘A master of language.’ Hilary Mantel
Kate, a grieving, semi-alcoholic film student, invites an elderly woman to take part in an oral-history documentary.
Jean declines but makes her a bizarre counteroffer: if Kate can stay sober for four days, she will tell her a story. If she can stay sober beyond that, there will be another, and then another, amounting to the entire history of one family’s life.
Gradually, Jean offers a heart-breaking account, not only of her own history – a lost lover, a family scarred by war – but of the American century itself; as a deep connection emerges between the women which will transform both of their lives in this remarkable novel about love grief, and the power of unlikely friendships.
‘Burnside wrestles with hugeness in a way that few writers dare to … convincingly gracious and profoundly necessary.’ Ali Smith
What does it mean to live with integrity in the United States of America? That is the question haunting John Burnside’s new novel… The way that Burnside layers these stories is masterful, and becomes a meditation on storytelling itself. -- Duncan White * Daily Telegraph *
A book of wintry landscapes, family secrets and alcoholism, but it's also a paean to the art of listening well that is especially welcome after the last 12 months of stridency…Burnside, who is also an accomplished poet, writes lyrical rose with virtuoso ease…Ashland & Vine is built on the trust that evolves between talker and listener; the movement of a mind trapped in its own uncertainties and a series of tableaux which build to a strange and stirring kind of redemption. -- Marcel Theroux * Guardian *
This is a novel that will no doubt be catching the eyes of judges of major prizes in 2017. * Big Issue, 2017 Books of the Year *
Ashland and Vine is a great book… It proceeds with such loping grandeur and is so tight-lipped about its themes that it takes a while for the realization to dawn that it is nothing short of an American epic. That, however, is what Burnside has written: a drifty, dreamy, dramatic epic. -- James Marriott * The Times *
Ashland & Vine proposes solace and joy in intergenerational friendship, and an optimism in what can be accomplished through talking and listening. -- Thomas Marks * Literary Review *
- Short-listed for Saltire Society Fiction Book of the Year 2017 (UK)
ISBN: 9780099554936
Dimensions: 198mm x 129mm x 22mm
Weight: 245g
352 pages