Kirsty Gunn

The Big Music tells the story of John Sutherland of The Grey House, who is dying and creating in the last days of his life a musical composition that will define it. Yet he has little idea of how his tune will echo or play out into the world - and as the book moves inevitably through its themes of death and birth, change and stasis, the sound of his solitary story comes to merge and connect with those around him. In this remarkable work of fiction, Kirsty Gunn has created something as real as music or as magical as a dream. One emerges at the end of it altered and changed. Not so much a novel as a place the reader comes to inhabit and know, The Big Music is a literary work of undeniable originality and power.

A short story by Kirsty Gunn from the collection Reader, I Married Him: Stories inspired by Jane Eyre. In Dangerous Dog, a fitness instructor teaches teenage boys how to handle a pit bull terrier by telling them Jane Eyres story. Edited by Tracy Chevalier, the full collection, Reader, I Married Him, brings together some of the finest and most creative voices in fiction today, to celebrate and salute the strength and lasting relevance of Charlotte Brontes game-changing novel and its beloved narrator.

Ward a quinze ans et la désagréable sensation d''être coupé du monde. Son père est un surfeur de légende, dont l''emprise et tes exigences l''écrasent. Les fêtes entre adolescents l''angoissent. Il s

À son retour des États-Unis, où il a vécu pendant dix ans, Evan Gordonstone, la quarantaine, financier à succès, tombe éperdument amoureux de Caroline, dont il est le locataire à Richmond, une banlie

Evan Gordonston et Emily Stuart se connaissent depuis l’enfance. Après avoir vécu aux États-Unis plusieurs décennies, Evan, financier à succès, revient s’installer en Angleterre. Il a un véritable co

Alright I said, Ill try... This is how Emily Stuart opens her intricate tale of a classic love affair that becomes Carolines Bikini: a swirling cocktail of infatuation, obsession, and imagination.The moment that Emilys friend Evan Gordonstone - a successful middle-aged financier - meets Caroline Beresford - a glamorous former horsewoman, and now housewife, hostess, and landlady - there is a PING! At least, thats how Evan describes it to Emily when he persuades her to record his story: the story of falling into unrequited love, which is as old as Western literature itself. Thus begins a hypnotic series of conversations set against the beguiling backdrop of West Londons bars, fuelled in intensity by endless G&Ts and Q&As. From the depths of mid-winter to Julys hot swelter, Emilys narration of Evans passion for Caroline will take him to the brink of his own destruction.Written in a voice so playful, so charismatic, and so thoughtfully aware of the responsibilities of fiction it can only be by Kirsty Gunn, Carolines Bikini is a swooning portrait of courtly love - in a modern world not celebrated for its restraint and abstraction. Ready. Steady. Go!

Hay ocasiones en que la identificación con un ser querido puede llevar a una persona a imaginarse la vida de aquél, a recordar episodios vividos por ambos metiéndose uno en la piel del otro. El recuerdo es la historia de la relacion de una madre con su hija vista por esta ultima. Su identificacion con ella, imaginando, recordando y repasando su vida desde el prisma de su propia madre. Es un viaje al pasado de la protagonista que nos narra su infancia, se representa la habitacion en la que convivia con su progenitora, se imagina sus sueños. Repasa los momentos felices con su padre, al que nunca conocio. Revive el abandono que sufriera por parte de este; los deseos, desesperanzas y miedos que le produjo. Solo repitiendo aquellas vivencias podra empezar a encontrar su verdadera historia y descubrir poco a poco esa verdad que su madre siempre tuvo miedo de contarle. Con una prosa cuidada y bella, Kirsty Gunn explora en El recuerdo la memoria de la infancia perdida, la intimidad y la amarga violencia de la vida.

Contradictions (both real and apparent), oppositions, enigmas, provocations, challengesthis is the kind of material that makes a life, and is the kind of material that, in fiction, one is never quite sure of. With Pretty Ugly, Kirsty Gunn reminds us again that she is a master of just such stuff, presenting ambiguity and complication as the essence of the storytellers endeavour. The sheer force of life that Gunn is able to load these stories up with is both testament to her unrivalled skill and an exercise in what she describes as reading and writing ugly, in order to pursue the deeper truths that lie at the heart of both the human imagination and human rationality. So here we have all the strange and seemingly impossible dualities that make up real lifeand pretty ugly it can be, as well as beautiful, hopeful, bleak, difficult, exhilarating. But never, ever dull.

Featherstone es un agradable pueblecito con su banco, su oficina de correos, su colegio y sus casas diseminadas. A simple vista, un pueblo apacible, como cualquier otro, con una comunidad en estrecha relacion, unida por las costumbres y los vinculos familiares. Pero es un lugar en el que el tiempo corre lentamente y solo existe el bar para ahogar el tedio y las frustraciones. Un pueblo cuya vida cotidiana es una cadena perpetua de la que se quiere huir. Si se tiene el valor para hacerlo como Francie Johanssen, que un buen dia desaparecio sin dejar rastro. Durante un largo fin de semana estival corre por Featherstone el rumor de que Francie ha vuelto. Una noticia que turba la tediosa paz y obliga a los distintos personajes a tomar conciencia del tiempo pasado y a replantearse su vida. Una reflexion contradictoria entre el placer y el dolor como la propia presencia de Francie, tan insignificante como una pluma (feather) y a la vez pesada como una piedra (stone). Con una prosa ritmica, encabalgada, que crece con la fuerza y continuidad de una ola, Gunn entrecruza los sueños y anhelos, los secretos guardados durante años de una galeria de personajes comunes, en un marco asombrosamente nitido de los mas intimos sentimientos humanos. Como en sus novelas y relatos anteriores, capta con notable destreza y sensibilidad la realidad y la belleza del momento fugaz. Con una atractiva desnudez verbal, mezcla los tonos luminosos y poeticos de un paisaje con los pensamientos mas profundos en las distintas etapas de la vida. Evoca con notable talento y sutileza los anhelos femeninos y los de los adolescentes en busca de su destino, la fe, la necesaria esperanza y, sobre todo, el amor y lo que este significa. Featherstone ha sido muy bien recibida por la critica.

Kirsty Gunn returned to spend the winter in her home town of Wellington, New Zealand, the place where Katherine Mansfield also grew up. Gunn explores the ideas of home and belonging and of the profound influence of Mansfield on her own creative journey.