Folk - Hardcover

Gilbert, Zoe

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1408884399 ISBN 13: 9781408884393

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018

Synopsis

A captivating, magical and haunting debut novel of breathtaking imagination, from the winner of the 2014 Costa Short Story Award

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2019 INTERNATIONAL DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE

The remote island village of Neverness is a world far from our time and place.

The air hangs rich with the coconut-scent of gorse and the salty bite of the sea. Harsh winds scour the rocky coastline. The villagers' lives are inseparable from nature and its enchantments.

Verlyn Webbe, born with a wing for an arm, unfurls his feathers in defiance of past shame; Plum is snatched by a water bull and dragged to his lair; little Crab Skerry takes his first run through the gorse-maze; Madden sleepwalks through violent storms, haunted by horses and her father's wishes.

As the tales of this island community interweave over the course of a generation, their earthy desires, resentments, idle gossip and painful losses create a staggeringly original world. Crackling with echoes of ancient folklore, but entirely, wonderfully, her own, Zoe Gilbert's Folk is a dark, beautiful and intoxicating debut.

About this title

Review:

An extraordinary debut novel . It feels both ancient - drawing on deep seams of myth and folklore - and strikingly contemporary, pushing at the edges of what we mean when we call a book a novel. In Folk, Zoe Gilbert has made a thing of strange and enduring beauty (Alex Preston Financial Times)

Folk is a special book: immersive and dripping with life, each story a spell, an allegory, a dark, smoky poem divined from the landscape of our ancient kingdom . It reads like a dream that, once visited, is difficult to leave behind (Ben Myers Guardian)

Genuinely original, disturbing, beautiful and gripping ... Folk can be read as a map of the British mythic imagination: of the river under the river. Starkly original and expertly written, it draws you, like a faerie song, into a kingdom from which you may never escape, and may not want to (New Statesman)

Dazzling and unsettling, much like the best and darkest of fairy tales (Times Literary Supplement)

A dark, often discomforting debut . Gilbert's sensuous prose conjures fantastical figures including a man born with a wing for an arm, and a girl who's abducted by a water bull . Bewitching (The Best New Fiction Mail on Sunday)

Folk is absolutely stunning. I loved it. With gorgeous, incantatory prose, it submerges you in a mysterious and utterly compelling world. Its illumination lingers long after you close the book (Madeline Miller, Orange Prize-winning author of The Song of Achilles)

I was thoroughly absorbed. Zoe Gilbert's invented folk-world is sensuous and dangerous and thick with magic (Tessa Hadley, author of The Past)

That rare thing: genuinely unique. It's part-myth, part-allegory, wholly wonderful (The Best Fiction of 2018 Observer)

A captivating mythical, magical and haunting debut which draws on fascinating folklore (Ten Debut Novels to Watch Out For i)

Wild, domestic, powered by elements both natural and weird, Folk hauls us into a past where there's room for magic and for mystery. Give in and go there (Margo Lanagan, author of Tender Morsels)

Book Description:

A captivating, magical and haunting debut novel of breathtaking imagination, from the winner of the 2014 Costa Short Story Award

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1408884399
• ISBN 13: 9781408884393
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256