Eat My Heart Out Page 26
Permissions
Extract from Coeur de Lion by Ariana Reines. Copyright © Ariana Reyes 2011. Extract of ‘1st September, 1939’ © Estate of W.H Auden and reprinted by permission of Curtis Brown New York Ltd. Extract of ‘Westward Ho’ © Estate of Samuel Beckett and reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd. Song lyric from ‘Munchausen’ by No Bra reproduced by kind permission of No Bra. © No Bra. Extract of ‘Lady Lazarus’ taken from Ariel © Estate of Sylvia Plath and reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd. Extract from The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan reproduced by kind permission of The Orion Publishing Group, London. Copyright © Betty Friedan 1963. Extract from Save Me the Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald, reproduced by kind permission of Random House. Copyright renewed © 1960 Frances Scott Fitzgerald Lanahan. ‘Zipless Fuck’ is a term coined by Erica Jong in Fear of Flying © 1973, 2013. Used by permission of the novelist.
The author has cited the following:
p.98-99. This extract is indebted to Marina Van Zuylen’s Monomania: The Flight From Every Day Life in Literature (published by Cornell University Press, 2005), especially her insights into romantic obsession and femininity.
p.108. Pierre Bourdieu refers to ‘the weapons of the weak’ in Masculine Domination, published by Polity Press 2001, which he draws from Lucien Bianco (p.59).
p. 108-9. The article recounted in Falling Out of Fate is a fictionalised version of a newspaper story described in The Sixties Unplugged by Gerard DeGroot published by MacMillan, 2008 (p.215)
p. 165. The italicized words below are from the Thames Water / Walthamstow Reservoir website: There was supposed to be various insect life, meaning stocked fish very quickly turn into firm-fleshed, fighting wild fish, but I couldn’t see any water, let alone fish, let alone insects.
p.294. The idea of the turning figure of subjection is derived from The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection by Judith Butler, published by Stanford University Press, 1997.
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM SERPENT’S TAIL
THE PIANO TEACHER
Elfriede Jelinek
Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature
Erika Kohut teaches piano at the Vienna Conservatory by day. By night she trawls the city’s porn shows while her mother, whom she loves and hates in equal measure, waits up for her. Into this emotional pressure-cooker bounds music student and ladies’ man Walter Klemmer.
With Walter as her student – and teacher – Erika spirals out of control, consumed by the ecstacy of self-destruction. A haunting tale of morbid voyeurism and masochism, The Piano Teacher is Elfriede Jelinek’s masterpiece.
ISBN 978 1 84668 737 2
eISBN 978 1 84765 306 2
THE MIDDLESTEINS
Jami Attenberg
Edie and Richard have been married for over 30 years, living in the Chicago suburbs. Everyone who knew them – even their own children Robin and Benny – agreed that Edie was a tough woman to love, but no-one expected Richard to walk out on her, especially not in her condition. Edie is 59 years old, she weighs 300 pounds, and her doctors have told her she’ll die if she doesn’t stop eating.
As Richard is shut out by the family and seeks solace in the world of internet dating, Robin is dragged back from the city and forced to rebuild a relationship with her mother. Meanwhile Benny and his neurotic wife Rachelle try to take control of the situation. But have any of them stopped to think about whether Edie really wants to be saved?
Written with sly humour, warmth and great insight, The Middlesteins is a novel about what it means to be part of a family.
ISBN 978 1 84668 932 1
eISBN 978 1 84765 943 9
WEIRDO
Cathi Unsworth
Twenty years ago, a fifteen-year-old schoolgirl named Corrine Woodrow was convicted of murdering one of her classmates.
But now new forensic evidence indicates that Corrine didn’t act alone, and Sean Ward – a private investigator whose promising career in the Met was cut short by a teenage drug dealer with an automatic weapon – travels to the seaside town of Ernemouth, to try to discover what really happened all those years ago. But he quickly realises that what’s ultimately at stake is not Corrine’s reputation, but those of the people who ran the place then – and still run it now.
In order to get to the truth, he has to take on not just retired Detective Inspector Len Rivett – the man who headed up the original case and wants to keep it firmly closed – but also the mindset of an entire town that has always known how to look after its own.
ISBN 978 1 84668 792 1
eISBN 978 1 84765 849 4
APOCALYPSE BABY
Virginie Despentes
Valentine, the troubled daughter of a well-off but dysfunctional Parisian family, vanishes on her way to school. Inexperienced private detective Lucie Toledo is hired to find the missing teenager, and enlists the help of a formidable agent with a past, known to her friends as the Hyena. Their quest, from Paris to Barcelona and back, uncovers a rich cast of characters whose paths have crossed Valentine’s, leading to an alarming climax.
Part political thriller, part road-movie, part romance, the latest novel by subversive writer and film-maker Virginie Despentes won the Prix Renaudot 2010 for the pitiless gaze it directs at society in the age of the internet.
ISBN 978 1 84668 842 3
eISBN 978 1 84765 790 9
WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN
Lionel Shriver
Winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction
Eva never really wanted to be a mother; certainly not the mother of the unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher who tried to befriend him. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood and Kevin’s horrific rampage in a series of startlingly direct correspondences with her absent husband. Uneasy with the sacrifices and social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.
With a new introduction by Kate Mosse.
ISBN 978 1 84668 734 1
eISBN 978 1 84765 174 7
FAMILIAR
J. Robert Lennon
Elisa Brown is driving back from her annual visit to her son Silas’s grave. The road is flat and featureless, and so she finds herself focussing on an old crack in her windscreen. For a moment, she loses sense of all else around her.
When she comes back to herself, everything has changed.
The car she is driving is not the same car. Her body is more subtly changed. She’s wearing different clothes. But a name badge pinned to her blouse tells her she’s still Elisa Brown. When she arrives home, her life is familiar-but different. There is her house, her husband. But in the world she now inhabits, Silas is no longer dead, and his brother is disturbingly changed. Elisa has a new job, and her marriage seems sturdier, and stranger. She finds herself faking her way through a life she is convinced is not her own. Has she had a psychotic break? Or has she entered a parallel universe? She soon discovers that these questions hinge on being able to see herself as she really is-something that might be impossible for Elisa, or for anyone.
ISBN 978 1 84668 947 5
eISBN 978 1 78283 009 2