Clare Fisher and Michèle Roberts
Posted 22:24, 6 July 2017
So many good things happening on the 6th July. We have both Clare Fisher and Michèle Roberts reading from their new books.
Clare Fisher's debut novel is "Heartfelt, heartbreaking, and genuinely joyous" - Francis Spufford. All the Good Things asks the question; What if you did a very bad thing... but that wasn't the end of the story
Twenty-one year old Beth is in prison. The thing she did is so bad she doesn't deserve ever to feel good again. But her counsellor, Erika, won't give up on her. She asks Beth to make a list of all the good things in her life. So Beth starts to write down her story, from sharing silences with Foster Dad No.1, to flirting in the Odeon on Orange Wednesdays, to the very first time she sniffed her baby's head. But at the end of her story, Beth must confront the bad thing.
What is the truth hiding behind her crime? And does anyone - even a 100% bad person - deserve a chance to be good.
Michèle Roberts has written thirteen novels including Booker-shortlisted Daughters of the House. Michele is Emeritus Professor of Creative Writing at the Universityof East Anglia. The Walworth Beauty is a sensuous, evocative novel exploring the lives of women in Victorian London.
Two entwined lives, Walworth, South London 2011 and 1851. Madeleine loses her job and feels a distant shifting past encroaching upon the present. Joseph is employed to research the working classes and finds himself coaxing testimony from postitutes. Alive with the sensations of London past and present, The Walworth Beauty is a haunting tale of desire and exploitation, isolation and loss, and the faltering search for human connection.
“Her fictions are high-risk, unconventional ... The otherwise cautious reader is taken almost without realising it into dangerous and exhilarating territory” – Rachel Cusk,
“Roberts is at her best when she writes about food and sex, about feelings and desires that cut across boundaries of time and class” – Sunday Times