Items related to The Gate Of Air
When mysterious loner Jim Smith moves into remote Paradise Farmhouse, he experiences some strange but wonderful midnight visits from an ethereal woman. He soon discovers that this dream-like figure is the incarnation of a 1960s beauty, immortalized in a famous nude portrait that belongs to his neighbour. Intrigued, Jim abandons his customary aloofness to find out more, and accepts a dinner invitation from his landlords - a billionaire-thug and his beautiful but mistreated wife. The dinner party - a chance for a brilliantly satirical sketch of the braying upper class hunting set - is disastrous and, soon after, Jim's pastoral idyll disintegrates. His lambs die. Cows give no milk. Bees swarm. Sensing his ghostly lover has turned malevolent, Jim knows he must placate her before the circle of decay reaches those he loves - even if that means making the ultimate sacrifice. Both unsettling ghost story and intense love story, The Gate of Air is by turns poetic, learned, satirical and allegorical. This is a beautifully crafted novel about love and loneliness, life and death, and the indelible traces we leave behind us when we die.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review:
'Not only a brilliant study of rural decay and the tragedy of the commons, but also both an unsettling ghost story and a strangely moving romance, and it succeeds beautifully on all those levels' John Burnside, The Times. (The Times)
Nobody - but nobody - tells a love story better - Paul Baily, Daily Telegraph. (Daily Telegraph)
...beguiling, poetic prose...a moving meditation on what it is to love - Daily Mail. (Daily Mail)
'A wayward and extraordinary ghost story which finds room for both a personal appearance by the goddess of love and a discourse on the political economy of the British countryside.' Evening Standard Books of the Year. (Evening Standard)
'Layers are peeled off the palimpsest of the English landscape, and of literature itself... the book's final paragraph is nothing short of magical... [Buchan] is a novelist who takes no literary convention for granted, and each book he writes is a discovery' Stephen Poole, Guardian. (Guardian)
I don't believe this country has a better writer to offer than James Buchan - Michael Hofmann, London Review of Books. (London Review of Books)
From the Back Cover:
Nobody - but nobody - tells a love story better - Paul Baily, Daily Telegraph. (Daily Telegraph)
...beguiling, poetic prose...a moving meditation on what it is to love - Daily Mail. (Daily Mail)
'A wayward and extraordinary ghost story which finds room for both a personal appearance by the goddess of love and a discourse on the political economy of the British countryside.' Evening Standard Books of the Year. (Evening Standard)
'Layers are peeled off the palimpsest of the English landscape, and of literature itself... the book's final paragraph is nothing short of magical... [Buchan] is a novelist who takes no literary convention for granted, and each book he writes is a discovery' Stephen Poole, Guardian. (Guardian)
I don't believe this country has a better writer to offer than James Buchan - Michael Hofmann, London Review of Books. (London Review of Books)
Jim Smith, ousted by City financiers from his computer software company, retreats to an old farmhouse in the remote West of England. Though he knows nothing of country life, he takes on livestock and crops, a dog, and a labourer of mysterious and independent habits.
One night Jim is visited by convulsive dreams of a beautiful woman, and at dinner with the local magnate, he sees a ghost. His pastoral idyll disintegrates. All the certainties and reassurances of modern life vanish, and Jim must deal alone with elemental and implacable forces as old as his fields and woods.
The Gate of Air is both an exploration of a disturbed modernity and a fireside spine-chiller of Victorian vigour and conviction.
One night Jim is visited by convulsive dreams of a beautiful woman, and at dinner with the local magnate, he sees a ghost. His pastoral idyll disintegrates. All the certainties and reassurances of modern life vanish, and Jim must deal alone with elemental and implacable forces as old as his fields and woods.
The Gate of Air is both an exploration of a disturbed modernity and a fireside spine-chiller of Victorian vigour and conviction.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherISIS Large Print Books
- Publication date2010
- ISBN 10 0753183897
- ISBN 13 9780753183892
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages240
- Rating
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