Spent Light

‘Reading Pawson you realise how obedient most writing is, constrained by squeamishness or protocol … Lara Pawson’s writing is brilliant, unnerving and shockingly alive.’ – Miranda France, Times Literary Supplement

‘I’m flabbergasted by the naked determination on show here, not to say the talent. Page by page, image by image, association by association, Lara Pawson develops a picture of the world that you won’t be offered anywhere else: stark, unremitting, brilliantly formed and written.’  – M. John Harrison

‘A shocking book. Lara Pawson’s merciless and exquisite prose adorns everyday objects with the violence of history – the savage comedy by which living creatures have become broken, petrified things. I will never look at a toaster or a timer, a toenail or a squirrel, the same way again.’ – Merve Emre

‘A narrative that presents as fragmentary, bordering on stream-of-consciousness, coheres into something deeply affecting – the accumulation of moments of pain, beauty, and epiphany refracted through quotidian things: a timer, a toilet, a toaster, a squirrel, a toenail … Stark, shocking imagery is tempered by the gentle sense of love that pervades the narrative. Pawson confronts horrors, bodily and otherwise, to offer perspective on a relationship […] that offers stability, intellectual companionship, and tenderness.’  – Andrew Clarke, Irish Times

‘Pawson has a facility for sensory detail and a bracing candour about her sometimes disturbing desires … Violence is encoded everywhere … But there is also humour and love in this remarkable book, and an appreciation of the life in everything.’  – Tom Gatti, New Statesman