A dazzling debut. Elaine Canning’s words sing with grace and a quiet, glowing energy as she inventively fuses the real and the fantastic.
Prajwal Parajuly, author
Originally from Belfast, Elaine Canning is a writer, editor, public engagement specialist and Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales. Author of a monograph and papers on Spanish Golden-Age drama, as well as several short stories, her debut novel, The Sandstone City, was published by Aderyn Press (2022) and featured on Wales Arts Review’s 2022 list of top ten long-form fiction titles. Elaine currently lives in Swansea, South Wales.
The Sandstone City | Aderyn Press, 2022
Eighty-eight-year-old Michael Doherty lies in an open coffin, listening to those who have come to pay their respects. Despite his dead son Cormac’s protests, he’s not yet ready to pass over. His granddaughter is the reason. Twenty-something Sarah has inexplicably abandoned her plans to settle in Spain and returned home deeply scarred by the Sandstone City, and he needs to know why.
He is granted a special grace period of forty days. Forty days to discover and heal his granddaughter’s trauma. Forty days to face his own past. Forty days to find peace before he must make his final departure.
But Michael and Sarah are not alone. Ghosts populate the streets of Salamanca, and they have a message for Sarah.
Set between modern-day Belfast and the Spanish Civil War, The Sandstone City is a story about the decisions we make, the choices denied us, and how we navigate what’s left.
A delightfully original and unsettling novel that travels into deep pockets of forgotten pasts, and takes us through resurrected loves to new beginnings.
Namita Gokhale
Elaine Canning is a new and original voice whose wonderful novel seamlessly links the living and the dead to powerful and moving effect.
David Park
A cracking, richly absorbing read on familial bonds, loss and the ways we heal.
Irenosen Okojie
This powerful debut novel took hold of me from the opening utterance of recently dead Michael Doherty as he speaks from his open coffin. Canning is a new voice in fiction: emotional rather than sentimental, with an ability to move seamlessly into magical realism and to capture the complexity of the human condition and its search for acceptance.
Jane Fraser
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Aderyn Press | Cover to Cover | Amazon | Waterstones
Maggie O’Farrell: Contemporary Critical Perspectives | Bloomsbury, 2024
Bringing together cultural analysis and textual readings on critically-acclaimed bestseller and winner of the prestigious Women's Prize for Fiction, Maggie O'Farrell, this collection covers her nine novels, her memoir I Am, I Am, I Am, two children's books and features an exclusive interview with the author herself.
The first full-length study of O'Farrell's work, this book offers critical explorations from her earliest works to the award-winning Hamnet and most recent best-selling novel, The Marriage Portrait.
With a timeline of her life and works, as well as suggested further reading, the themes explored include: grief and sacrifice, longing and belonging, trauma, translation, palimpsestic texts and the relation of her work to history and the female domestic gothic.
Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet brought her the critical acclaim she has long deserved, and now this excellent collection of essays brings her the scholarly attention she merits. These essays are theoretically savvy and offer smart but accessible readings that will return readers and scholars to the delights of O’Farrell’s work.
Jo Eldridge Carney, Professor of English, The College of New Jersey, USA
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Bloomsbury
Harvest: The Rhys Davies Short Story Award Anthology 2023 | Parthian
Inquisitive children and solitary beings; conflicted couples and a sprinkling of spirits and monsters: these are just some of the characters which inhabit the twelve stories in this collection of new contemporary fiction by the winners of the 2023 Rhys Davies Short Story Competition.
A young girl discovers a body in the woods near her home; a man lords over his cockle-beds; and a holidaying couple set off on a nocturnal mission. A group of children enlist the help of a witch to assist a dying relative, while a local talent show casts a spotlight on hopes and dreams.
From an All-American Diner deep in the Rhondda to rural Welsh landscapes, working-class communities and cultural and linguistic journeys beyond Wales, these stories combine traditional storytelling, realism and magical realism as protagonists face their demons head on.
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Parthian | Waterstones | Cover to Cover
