Midland - Softcover

Gavin, Honor

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1908058234 ISBN 13: 9781908058232

Publisher: Penned in the Margins, 2014

Synopsis

SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE 2015

An industrial accident in a wire factory and the chance discovery of a birth certificate. Church services held in a ruined swimming pool. An unidentified elephant skull. Midland tells the stories of three young women as they fight to find their feet amidst the accumulated rubble of the twentieth century. From the bombsites of the 1940s to the construction sites of the 1960s and the school halls and decaying tower blocks of the 1980s, Honor Gavin has created an ingenious narrative of one Midlands family that is also a startling, anarchic history of a city. Composed in electric prose that soars and dives, blending keenly observed dialect with urban theory, cinema, farcical digressions and surrealist timekeeping, Midland is a novel out of time but in the middle of everything.  

REVIEWS

"To me, reading this book was dream-like as I sequenced between nostalgia and explicitly remembered detail. The narrative scenarios drew me into a believable world that was also a kind of science fiction. I loved the way that Honor played with language, peppering the pages with a wonderful mix of colloquiums and made up words that brought me closer to the heart of the world I was suspended in." - GAVIN TURK, ARTIST & JUDGE FOR THE 2015 GORDON BURN PRIZE

"An original, sparky and fresh voice. Midland makes the female family epic anew and exhilarating." - CHERRY SMYTH, WRITER & CRITIC

About this title

About the Author:

Honor Gavin was born in Birmingham in 1984 to a radio presenter and a retail assistant. To her three older siblings she owes her love of pop and Back to the Future. After her ambition of playing football for Aston Villa was jilted, she went on to study literature at the University of Oxford, where she also formed a band called How Can You. Architecturally, Hertford College's Bridge of Sighs had nothing on Birmingham's concrete skyways, prompting a fierce fondness for her home city that later became obsessive. A writer, musician, and academic, Gavin is a founding member of the whenwebuildagain.org collective, has written widely on subjects including Samuel Beckett, Buster Keaton, and Brutalism, and has been a contributor to zines such as The Modernist and All That is Common. After a period in Berlin, she currently teaches literature and film at the University of Sussex, and plays piano and guitar in a band called Textual.

Review:

'Honor Gavin is one of the cleverest people I know.' - Tom McCarthy, author of C

About this edition

• Publisher: Penned in the Margins
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1908058234
• ISBN 13: 9781908058232
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 316