Robert Douglas-Fairhurst and Helen Simpson discuss Dickens at Christmas

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The Vintage Podcast: Robert Douglas-Fairhurst and Helen Simpson discuss Dickens at Christmas

Constitutional

A sensational short story collection from Britain's master of the genre.

A masterful contemporary exponent of the genre. Simpson now deserves to be compared with Flannery O'Connor and Alice Munro

Simpson's use of language is remarkable: she handles prose with the risky precision of a trapeze artist, swooping and tumbling through empty air, seeming certain at moments to succumb to whimsy or sentimentality but at the last moment recovering her grasp on the deftly constructed framework of her narratives. It's a virtuoso performance; its effect on the reader both consoling and exhilarating

She is a virtuoso... Briskly melancholic, dazzlingly pertinent short stories about women's lives and how they survive

Subtle, emotional, humorous, painful and acute... It's a small masterpiece

The brilliance of the conceits and the complex economy that shapes the best of these tales, match and surpass any of Helen Simpson's earlier writing

Together with the biting humour, there is aching sadness and real tenderness, making this collection up there with the best of this genre

Constitutional is Helen Simpson fourth collection of short stories and shows some fine developments in one of the Short Story forms more accomplished practitioners

Helen Simpson's sixth short-story collection, Cockfosters, follows Four Bare Legs in a Bed (1990), Dear George (1995), Hey Yeah Right Get a Life (2000), Constitutional (2005) and In-Flight Entertainment (2010). A Bunch of Fives: Selected Stories (2012) includes five stories from each of her first five collections. She has received the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the Somerset Maugham Award, the Hawthornden Prize and the E.M.Forster Award. She lives in London.

A sensational short story collection from Britain's master of the genre. 
 
Charting tantrums, funerals, pregnancy and love affairs, these stories unroll with piercing wit and compassion. One woman finds grief for her lost lover is assuaged when she invests in a new front door. Another grows increasingly frustrated as the grim reaper scythes through her circle, with farcical and tragic results. 
 
Elsewhere, a chain-smoker’s brush with death appears to help him reassess his priorities, a south London builder avenges the duping of his adored mother, and a phlebotomist’s relationship is pushed to it limits by her preoccupation with war. And in the title story, a teacher’s circular walk on Hampstead Heath leads to revelations about mourning, ageing, and new life. 
 
‘A masterful contemporary exponent of the genre. Simpson now deserves to be compared with Flannery O'Connor and Alice Munro’ Robert McCrum, Observer

Four Bare Legs In a Bed

'Stories told in such succulent prose that you wince at their brevity... a most exceptional debut' - Evening Standard 
 
Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award.

These stories of sex pack a truly original pungency... kicking off belly-laughs or melting you with an apt phrase, Simpson makes a delectable debut

Dazzlingly original... Simpson's black-hearted humour is something to relish

Absolutely brilliant... the only book this year that's made me sick with envy

She can be sparingly tragic and unsparingly funny... A unique writer

Brilliant, funny and tragic, Four Bare Legs in a Bed is an outstanding and invigorating collection of short stories. In Simpson's singular and opulent voice, we hear of the mixed blessings of independence and marriage, of sex and babies. From a bed that transforms the lives of a struggling couple to a chorus of midwives telling the dramatic story of a birth, this is a playful, unique set of stories to treasure.

Dear George and Other Stories

The third collection from Helen Simpson, prize-winning writer and master of the short story.

Of all contemporary writers, Simpson has the most honest, the most authentic voice

Her stories can be read quickly, knocked back in a single, grateful gulp like an aperitif, or savoured with a slow, cool intoxication... She is Katherine Mansfield's natural successor

Simpson's wit defies formulaic feminism or, indeed, any other -ism... Very, very funny

Full of good jokes, wonderfully alert to irony and the possibilities of language

Effortless charm, wit and vivid sexual detail

This is Simpson's real charm - that she believes in love... Her heady sense of almost physical joy

In this stellar collection of short stories, Helen Simpson explores independence, solitude, marriage, sex and babies with her characteristic blend of comedy and lyricism. Here are tales of young love - successful or thwarted, intense or comic. 
 
 From a wedding day for one, through the knotty problems of babies, their conception, arrival and impact on adult lives, to a Lothario receiving his just deserts, and the title story, where a schoolgirl's erotic daydreams during her Shakespeare homework go on to produce blushes of horror.

In-Flight Entertainment

'A masterful contemporary exponent of the genre. Simpson now deserves to be compared with Flannery O'Connor and Alice Munro' - Observer

When it comes to contemporary maestros of the short-story form, Helen Simpson is up there with Alice Munro... If they had any sense the 10:10 carbon-reduction campaign would distribute this book for free, such is its power

The best short story writer now working in English

In-Flight Entertainment is quite delectable, confirming her as the queen of the comic short story

Simpson's gifts are a lyrical vocabulary, an authoritative form, a special funny-sad quality and a subtlety of understanding... Add in political argument, and she is a key voice for our time

It's all packed with Simpson's deadpan wit - she is one of the most sharply funny writers in England today

Helen Simpson can weave more thought and feeling into a thousand words than some achieve in as many pages

The collection as a whole is carefully organised, with the lightest piece butting against the most death-haunted one and a tidy distribution of public and private themes

Poignant, funny and perceptive, Helen Simpson's fifth collection of runs the gamut of emotions and deals with birth, death and everything in between. We shift from a diary chronicling the dangers of life as a woman in the bleak 2040s, to two students falling in love then almost talking themselves out of it in an argument about the end of the world, to a heartfelt anti-cancer spell cast in the hope of protecting a friend. 
 
 Moving effortlessly between tragedy and comedy and packed with a host of distinctive voices, this is an outstanding collection from a master of the genre.

Vintage Minis

Motherhood

Vintage Minis bring you the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human – from birth to death and everything in between

Helen Simpson is a writer with such a gift for sweet tenderness that one could almost overlook the glittering sharpness of the insights... Not many writers manage to be as funny as Helen Simpson without sacrificing the honesty that her writing unmistakably has

Imagine our joy when Vintage announced that it is publishing a collection of easily digestible books from the world’s most celebrated writers on the experiences that make us human… They look good and read well. That’s win/win in our book.

Enjoy Helen Simpson’s sharply funny, humane take on the everyday joys and struggles of motherhood in this perfect Mother’s Day gift. 
 
 Welcome to motherhood – a land of aching fatigue, constant self-sacrifice and thankless servitude, a land of bottomless devotion, small hands and feet like warm pink roses, and velvet kisses. Here is a land where men and women, once carefree and engrossed in work and sex, now try to solve age-old arguments and search fruitlessly for another hour in the day. Perhaps you know this land well, or perhaps you’re entering it for the first time – either way, you need these honest funny humane stories from an expert guide. 
 
Selected from Helen Simpson’s short story collections Dear George, Hey Yeah Right Get a Life and Constitutional 
 
VINTAGE MINIS: GREAT MINDS. BIG IDEAS. LITTLE BOOKS. 
 
A series of short books by the world’s greatest writers on the experiences that make us human 
 
Also in the Vintage Minis series: 
Language by Xiaolu Guo 
Fatherhood by Karl Ove Knausgaard 
Eating by Nigella Lawson 
Drinking by John Cheever

Cockfosters

Britain’s finest short story writer returns with a sparkling new collection

Helen Simpson is a vital (and pleasurable) voice

These uplifting and sensitive tales act like a guide to ‘the next phase’ – whatever that may bring.

Cockfosters is elegant, sane, and – while remaining firmly rooted in ordinary life – gently ground-breaking.

Over the course of a quarter century, Simpson has assembled a body of work that delivers one of literature’s richest accounts of the post-war lives of girls and women.

[Simpson’s] stories are chamber pieces, acutely observed domestic miniatures, and born of modesty.

Reading Simpson’s stories makes you feel less alone in the world: she’s one of those writers who just seem to hit the nail on the head. She’s funny, too.

Invigorating, aggressive wickedly funny short stories on the modern gender wars, exhausted motherhood and anxieties about work and getting older.

From varifocals to the menopause, a virtuoso of the short story turns her attention to the ageing process.

Elegant, understated and quietly funny stories.

Clever, affecting and frank, but above all, terrifically entertaining.

Sometimes one gets the sense that her stories are some kind of futuristic instruments, wearing the disguise of the short story, planted into the heart of evolving contemporary life to take hyperaccurate readings of the inner weather and shifting equilibria of a certain class of society.

Cockfosters isn’t just carefully crafted stories, Helen Simpson has also tackled some pertinent feminist issues in an incredibly sharp, honest and accessible way.

Sad and tender, sometimes political or formally inventive, and always beautifully observed.

Exhibits a wit and tenderness that makes her one of our best story writers.

In my stocking, to savour during the fug I hope to find [this book].

Themes of dealing with the force of ever-looming old age, the ups and downs of friendship, marriage and love, and the strength of female identity are expertly weaved together in Simpson’s crafty concoction of social commentary and character study. This is all of our lives and social taboos laid bare in comedic style, with the trials and oddities of modern life deftly illuminated.

A collection of warm and witty gems reflecting the complexities of modern life.

An unmissable collection of near-perfect short stories.

Full of minutely observed details of life that sparkle in her hands: funny, knowing, true. She is a master of dialogue… She can get more life onto a page than most can in twenty… An exceptional collection of stories.

Simpson has a fine ear for the cadence of everyday speech.

Simpson sharpens her fiction to a fine point, the better to dig into social wounds

A slim and fairly devastating volume... Simpson is truthful, funny, and sharp… The result is elegant, sane and, while remaining fairly rooted in ordinary life, gently ground-breaking.

A collection of well-turned short fiction.

Helen Simpson has been hailed as a true chronicler of what it means to be a woman. Her new collection explores the menopause years, to which there is no better, braver or funnier guide than Simpson.

Cockfosters is a funny, frank and forceful story collection dealing with ageing, ambition and the patterns of repetition and renewal found in long friendships and marriages. It opens irresistible new windows onto the world from Arizona to Dubai and from Moscow to Berlin. Turning both a panoramic and a zoom lens on the way we live now, these stories range through hitch-hiking in Bohemian forest-land to cresting the waves of the Aegean to the mending of hearts and the recovery of lost property at the end of the Piccadilly Line. 
 
Helen Simpson writes with great warmth, wit and candour about the complexities of modern life, and this new collection shows why she is hailed as one of the best short story writers at work in the world today.

A Bunch of Fives

'Lorrie Moore with a BBC accent' Jay McInerney

This is an outstanding collection of stories-the product of a new, original voice

Hilary Mantel reviewing 'Four Bare Legs in a Bed'

Of all contemporary writers, Simpson has the most honest, the most authentic voice... [Her] unfooled but kind eye is matched by her ear for the ebb and flow of everyday talk. But she does more than just record: every word rings true. Dear George shimmers with grace and savagery and wit

Jonathan Franzen reviewing 'Hey Yeah Right Get a Life'

A masterful contemporary exponent of the genre. Simpson now deserves to be compared with Flannery O'Connor and Alice Munro

Short stories are notoriously difficult to sell, but even people who don't care for the form make an exception for the work of Helen Simpson...Wickedly funny and painfully true...Dangerously close to perfection

Kate Saunders reviewing 'In-Flight Entertainment'

The most sensuous writer in the land

Absolutely brilliant... I never knew what the phrase "she can write like an angel' meant until I read this babe's book. Because you don't really think of angels writing, do you?You think of them playing harps, and flying about, and grooving en masse on the head of a pin...But there is something other-worldly, something seraphically savage about Helen Simpson's work

Helen Simpson is a writer with such a gift for sweet tenderness that one could almost overlook the glittering sharpness of the insights...[Her stories] are both deeply pleasurable, and-particularly for male readers-deeply uncomfortable.Not many writers manage to be as funny as Helen Simpson without sacrificing the honesty that her writing unmistakably has

Ample proof of her pre-eminent brilliance in the short form…her acute probing of malfunctioning relationships are both provocative and highly entertaining

I found her stories just as hard to put down as I used to; and repeated exposure to them just makes one appreciate the artistry even more… Simpson keeps her eyes open to what is around her, as well as to what is within her characters. It's the kind of detail that makes us wish she would hurry up so that we can read her thoughts about what's going on right now, the precise contours of our present anxieties. I suspect that she will have much to say, and be able to say it very well

A compact insight into the acclaimed writers work

Simpson, to my mind, is one of the best contemporary chroniclers of womanhood that I’ve read. She manages to get under the skin of her characters in a way that makes you feel you know them and completely understand their anxieties, at each point in their lives

She’s a genius at noticing and listening

Unexpected tales, perfectly pitched…suggesting Simpson sprand fully formed when she began writing

The great thing about Helen Simpson – or one of the great things – is that she pins people down so beautifully…her phrases sparkle

Simpson's meticulous fragments of contemporary self-delusion make beautiful narrative shapes out of the ordinary horrors of domestic life

Since the 1990 publication of her first collection, Four Bare Legs in a Bed, Helen Simpson has been hailed as one of the best short story writers at work in the world today. These wonderfully funny and penetrating stories take on the full stretch, from birth to death and everything in between, in writing of remarkable originality and clarity.

The Art and Pleasures of Taking Tea

The Ritz London Book Of Afternoon Tea

An irresistible collection of traditional teatime recipes and charming stories from the world famous Ritz Hotel

charming...It's quite right that everything should stop for tea.

Taking tea is one of the quintessentially English occasions, and who is a greater authority on the subject than the sumptuous Ritz London Hotel? This charming Edwardian-style book captures the essence of this traditional British pastime, and provides us with all the expertise on the ceremony as well as the recipes. Stories about the legendary afternoon teas at The Ritz and fascinating details about the history of tea drinking are complemented with passages from such diverse writers as Charles Dickens to Oscar Wilde. Over fifty recipes are included for different kinds of afternoon tea specialities, from delicate sandwiches, strawberry shortcake and rose petal jam, to crumpets and muffins for hearty teas in front of a roaring fire. The author gives an infallible guide to the many blends of tea and their suitability to particular occasions. Beautifully presented and delightfully illustrated, this book is the perfect gift for tea drinkers everywhere.

Helen Simpson

It's a brilliant, painful, funny and courageous book

Simply tremendous... She is a witch, with the surest hand in contemporary fiction

Her limpid, chaste, luscious fiction describes real lives

Her stories are - for those who, like me, recognise the truth in every word - like a reprieve... Sharp, poetic and marvellously witty

Motherhood has long been a subscription-only sort of subject. Helen Simpson has found a way to tell it, and I hope that people beyond the constituency margins are listening

Helen Simpson's third collection is a bold, honest exploration of the trials and the rewards of motherhood. 
 
‘Her stories are - for those who, like me, recognise the truth in every word - like a reprieve... Sharp, poetic and marvellously witty’ Kate Kellaway, Observer 
 
Here are tales of a highflyer stuck at an interminable Burns Night celebration, increasingly aware of the babysitter waiting for her at home; an exhausted mother longing for adult conversation but whose son unwittingly precludes it; and a teenage girl whose fraught encounter with a harried mum of one brings newfound appreciation for her own capable mother of four. Most strikingly of all we meet Dorrie, whose efforts to calm her tinderbox of a family leave her struggling to contain her own emotions. 
 
Hey Yeah Right Get a Life is a singular achievement: relatable, perceptive and utterly poignant. 
 
‘It's a brilliant, painful, funny and courageous book’ Esther Freud, Guardian

Helen Simpson

Praise for Hey Yeah Right Get A Life

It's a brilliant, painful, funny and courageous book

Simply tremendous... She is a witch, with the surest hand in contemporary fiction

Her limpid, chaste, luscious fiction describes real lives

It's a brilliant, painful, funny and courageous book

Simply tremendous... She is a witch, with the surest hand in contemporary fiction

Her limpid, chaste, luscious fiction describes real lives

It's a brilliant, painful, funny and courageous book

Simply tremendous... She is a witch, with the surest hand in contemporary fiction

Her limpid, chaste, luscious fiction describes real lives

Books by Helen Simpson

Articles featuring Helen Simpson

The Vintage Podcast: Robert Douglas-Fairhurst and Helen Simpson discuss Dickens at Christmas

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