The brilliant collection from award-winning author Blake Morrison

Shingle Street

A new collection of poems from bestselling poet, novelist and memoirist, Blake Morrison

Shingle Street is a bravura performance that’s also solid and heartfelt

A good, fresh performance to make a comeback with

Blake Morrison’s poetry glints like a river seen through the mud

These are humane poems, skillful, conversational, delicate and more complex than they at first appear

Good poetry is rare, and Blake Morrison’s…Shingle Street is the real thing. I keep going back to these poems, and enjoy them more each time

Born in Yorkshire, Blake Morrison is a poet, novelist, critic, journalist and librettist. He is the author of two bestselling memoirs, And When Did You Last See Your Father? (winner of the J.R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography and the Esquire Award for Non-Fiction) and Things My Mother Never Told Me, the novels The Justification of Johann Gutenberg, South of the River and The Last Weekend, and a study of the Bulger Case, As If. His first collection, Dark Glasses, was a Poetry Book Society Choice and won the Somerset Maugham Award. He lives in South London, and is Professor of Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College.

‘A cul-de-sac, a dead-end track, 
A sandbanked strand to sink a fleet, 
A bay, a bar, a strip, a trap, 
A wrecking ground, that’s Shingle Street.’ 
 
Blake Morrison’s first two collections, Dark Glasses (1984) and The Ballad of a Yorkshire Ripper (1987) established him as one of our most inventive and accomplished contemporary poets. 
 
In his first full-length collection for nearly thirty years, Shingle Street sees a return to the form with which he started his career. Set along the Suffolk coast, the opening poems address a receding world – an eroding landscape, ‘abashed by the ocean’s passion’. But coastal life gives way to other, more dangerous, vistas: a wave unleashes a flood-tide of terror; a sequence of topical poems lays bare pressing political issues; while elsewhere portraits of the past bring forth the dear and the departed. 
 
Ardent and elegiac, and encompassing an impressive range of mood and method, this is a timely offering from a poet of distinct talents.

Stop What You're Doing And Read This!

A mission statement about the transformative power of reading; about the way it inspires us, the tangible impact it can have on our wellbeing, the importance it holds for us now and will continue to hold in the future.

A strong argument for making "reading more" one of your new Year's Resolutions

Not having enough time to read is a common complaint. But as this collection of essays by ten committed bibliophiles attempts to show, reading should be an activity as regular as brushing your teeth

Ebullient... Subtle... Inspiring and impassioned... This advocacy for intense reading is punchy and sharp

A delightful collection of essays from luminaries of the book world... Some are personal, some political, but all are passionate

In any 24 hours there might be sleeping, eating, kids, parents, friends, lovers, work, school, travel, deadlines, emails, phone calls, Facebook, Twitter, the news, the TV, Playstation, music, movies, sport, responsibilities, passions, desires, dreams. 
 
Why should you stop what you're doing and read a book? 
 
People have always needed stories. We need literature - novels, poetry - because we need to make sense of our lives, test our depths, understand our joys and discover what humans are capable of. Great books can provide companionship when we are lonely or peacefulness in the midst of an overcrowded daily life. Reading provides a unique kind of pleasure and no-one should live without it. 
 
In the ten essays in this book some of our finest authors and passionate advocates from the worlds of science, publishing, technology and social enterprise tell us about the experience of reading, why access to books should never be taken forgranted, how reading transforms our brains, and how literature can save lives. In any 24 hours there are so many demands on your time and attention - make books one of them. 
 
Carmen Callil Tim Parks 
Nicholas Carr Michael Rosen 
Jane Davis Zadie Smith 
Mark Haddon Jeanette Winterson 
Blake Morrison Dr Maryanne Wolf &amp; Dr Mirit Barzillai

The Last Weekend

Four friends, one weekend, and a bet that changes everyone's lives...

The fascination is horrible, the prose addictive, the situation magnificently claustrophobic, the denouement shocking

Morrison has created far more than a sinister take on the country-house novel... This is a suspenseful thriller, but more importantly it succeeds as an exceedingly clever investigation into the strangeness of lies

A compelling psychological thriller that, in parts, will cause you to actually flinch

This is one achievement among several for Blake Morrison, who has written a novel that is at once artful and naturalistic, restrained and yet suggestive, and faithful to a perspective from which the readers wants to recoil

The story is beautifully crafted, astutely observed and peopled with believable characters

Morrison handles the elements of his novel with impeccable control

This is a seriously good novel and it deserves to overtake a few more loudly trumpeted false favourites in the popularity and prize stakes

Gripping...a masterpiece of pacing and revelation

A terrific thriller, a page-turner of impressive literary skill

It is the assuredness of Morrison's portrayal of Ian's descent which makes The Last Weekend compelling - and lifts a familiar...story skilfully above the commonplace

His truly sensational latest novel, which places him at the forefront of British novelists writing today

Creepy and compelling, but also often extremely funny. Blake Morrison has inhabited the world of a deeply flawed character with unforgettable results

Tautly written and tightly structured, this is a novel that explores jealousy, rivalry, deceit and manipulation

Warner navigates the comic, the philosophical and the socially acute like no other writer we have

Played refreshingly uncliched games with the device of the unreliable narrator

Blake Morrison's examination of the dark heart of male rivalry makes foe a gripping read

Pacy and gripping...wonderfully atmospheric

Morrison's compelling study of male competitiveness offers a discomforting account of the amoral excuses and self-deception of the compulsive gambler: "I don't have a problem.  I could stop tomorrow"; "gambling is the basis of our whole economy".  You reckon you could put it down at any point - though you'd be kidding yourself

The Bank Holiday weekend from hell is the subject of Blake Morrison's entertaining new novel - a dark little tale about middle-class rivalry and midsummer meltdown. With an ear attuned to metropolitan pretension - modern parenting skills are sent up with gusto - Morrison succeeds in weaving a murderous melodrama that is grounded in the most recognizable of human impulses and desires

A tense chamber piece about a twisted friendship...the author's skilful choreography of unsympathetic characters and a menacing tone make for a sharply intelligent novel that is both unnerving and enjoyable

The Last Weekend isn't really a thriller though its well-paced, tight and gripping narrative has you reaching for the same adjectives that you would use to describe one

For those holidaying with old friends…the book tells the chilling story ofa rivalrousfriendship…leaving Alex Clark to conclude that Morrison “keeps the reader constantly intrigued

Born in Skipton, Yorkshire, Blake Morrison is the author of two bestselling memoirs, And When Did You Last See Your Father? and Things My Mother Never Told Me, two novels (most recently the acclaimed South of the River and The Last Weekend), and a study of the Bulger case, As If. He is also a poet, critic, journalist and librettist. He teaches Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College, and lives in south London.

Set over a long weekend in East Anglia, this is the chilling story of a rivalrous friendship - as told with deceptive casualness by the narrator, Ian. It opens with a surprise phone call from an old university friend, inviting Ian and his wife, Em, for a few days by the sea. Their hosts, Ollie and Daisy, are a golden couple, and the scene is set for sunlit relaxation. 
 
But dangerous tensions quickly emerge, and in the stifling atmosphere of a remote cottage in the hottest days of summer, Ollie and Ian resurrect a bet made twenty years before. Each day becomes a series of challenges for higher and higher stakes, setting in train actions that will have irreversible consequences.

South of the River

Compelling, contemporary, comic, a significant change of direction for Blake Morrison - a kind of English The Corrections but sexier, sharper, broader and (for us) infinitely more recognisable.

Brilliantly written, horribly truthful, utterly absorbing

Morrison anatomises our times and achieves that rare thing: the creation of something substantial and important in fiction out of history as it unfolds in the here and now. His filleting of the new Labour zeitgeist is so ruthless and precise that one is torn between hilarity and despondency

Often very funny, constantly vigorous, constantly intelligent, constantly enjoyable

An ambitious stab at a state-of-the-nation novel pitched somewhere between Jonathan Coe and Franzen

A big, ambitious book...carefully structured, intelligently developed

This is Morrison breaking free: being populist and literary, simultaneously, and showing in the process that he can do something entirely different

A satisfying chunky novel set mainly during New Labour's first government

An enthralling novel of the way we live now in Blair's Britain... a marvellous account-taking of our hopes, lifestyles careers and even souls in an age where communication has never been easier, but to find someone who'll listen has never been harder

An accessible romp, ripe for the summer market

A work that is often very funny, constantly vigorous, always intelligent and enjoyable

Born in Skipton, Yorkshire, Blake Morrison is the author of two bestselling memoirs, And When Did You Last See Your Father? and Things My Mother Never Told Me, the novel The Last Weekend and a study of the Bulger case, As If. He is also a poet, critic, journalist and librettist. He teaches Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College, and lives in south London.

It opens on the 'new dawn' of Labour's election victory in 1997, and ends five years later. But this is not so much 'state of the nation' as state of our souls, marriages, families, hopes and careers - a sharp and sexy portrait of a dysfunctional group of characters, all different yet connected. 
 
There's Nat, failed dramatist and reluctant lecturer, falling for a younger woman; Anthea, an eco-friendly lost soul obesessed with foxes; Libby, hardworking mother and advertising executive; Harry, Nat's friend and ex-pupil, a journalist on a local paper, with a guilty secret of his own; and Jack, Nat's unexpectedly poignant uncle, who lives for fox-hunting. 
 
Intimate and disconcerting, compelling and comic, an anatomy of the way things are, South of the River is the big British novel for our times - and a tour de force.

Things My Mother Never Told Me

'The must-read book of the year, Blake Morrison writes about his mother with the mind of a poet, the eye of a detective and the heart of a loving son' Tony Parsons

[Morrison's] prose has the diamond cut of a poet's eye, and his story is suffused with warmth and longing-he has brought [his mother] vividly to life in an outstanding work of family literature

Honest, funny and touching, this is a loving tribute from a son to his mother

Morrison constructs the book beautifully, as always... Fine writing and expert editing...with Morrison's usual virtues of unsentimental observation and expert storytelling

A marvellous example of what a zen-like act of sustained attention can do to honour and illuminate the ordinary... It has a universality

A scintillating read... Not only a fine evocation of the period, but also a fascinating study of a marriage

Born in Skipton, Yorkshire, Blake Morrison is the author of the bestselling memoir, And When Did You Last See Your Father?, two novels, South of the River and The Last Weekend, and a study of the Bulger case, As If. He is also a poet, critic, journalist and librettist. He teaches Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College, and lives in south London.

In his masterpiece of family literature, And When Did you Last See Your Father?, Blake Morrison's mother appears as an intriguing but mostly silent figure. This is her startling and touching story - and a son's search to discover the truth about the remarkable Kerry girl who qualified as a doctor in Dublin in 1942, worked in British hospitals throughout the war, and then reinvented herself again to adapt to a quieter post-war family life. At the heart of the book there's a passionate wartime love affair, seen through the frank, funny, furious letters his parents wrote during their courtship. It evokes a surprising picture of life and love in WWII. From the obstacles the lovers faced, to their moments of hilarity and joy Things My Mother Never Told Me is a revealing and poignant anatomy of family conflict, love, war, and finally marriage. Kim Morrison emerges quietly, magically from the shadows, a determined heroine for our times.

Afterburn

Born in Skipton, Yorkshire, Blake Morrison is the author of bestselling memoirs, And When Did You Last See Your Father? (winner of the J.R. Ackerley Prize for Autobiography and the Esquire Award for Non-Fiction) and Things My Mother Never Told Me ('the must read book of the year' - Tony Parsons),. He also wrote a study of the disturbing child murder, the Bulger case, As If. His acclaimed recent novels include South of the River and The Last Weekend. He is also a poet, critic, journalist and librettist. He lives in South London.

Here you are, on the balcony, 
the sea serenading you, 
the sun with its armful of light. 
 
In Afterburn, his first collection since Shingle Street (2015), the renowned life writer Blake Morrison returns to poetry, his first calling, to offers scenes from his own life and the lives of others. In psychology, 'afterburn' refers to the period of time before a past event is assimilated: an idea that resonates through these poems – which themselves linger after reading – about memories and our human attempts to articulate, shape or contain them. 
 
Revisiting past and alternate selves, the poet dives back into the unassuming stream of our dailiness, to see with new eyes the turning points in a lifetime's accidental course. What holds these wise, touching, joyful poems together are the small intimacies that bind us to others, under time’s lengthening shadow: ‘you moved too fast for me to catch you / and so did the years.’ 
 
Playful, charming, sometimes rakishly so, Afterburn nevertheless reveals an open, and vulnerable, heart.

Blake Morrison

A novel of multi-level brilliance, which offers a smart, funny mystery built around ethical concerns over privacy and biography, while casting a beady eye on workplace politics and male midlife crises

Adept, attentive and occasionally beautiful ... When the poetry starts to break through, the book comes alive – reverberatingly, ravishingly so. Everything is illuminated... enter the revivifying excitements of adultery, incest, euthanasia; sex and lust and love; dreams, mortality and death... exquisitely metered, intimate and yet profound, glimmeringly intelligent, slyly sensual ... A worthwhile, interesting and impressive achievement

Generously and skilfully written ... The unravelling of the novel’s moral perplexity is both ingenious and persuasive… A pleasing and very satisfying novel.

A dark and compelling tale of what we leave behind us when we die

A stylist and satirical take on Kindle-era publishing, and is also a timely interrogation on the pertinence of "rampant masculinity" in contemporary fiction.

A clever, neatly constructed mystery -- and the poems are the best thing about it

Many pleasures ... Matt's domestic scenes confirm how good Morrison is on family life

A cunning literary novel… Seriously probing about poetry, its origins and repercussions.

Entertaining, well written and acute ... Morrison has an observant eye

Morrison's prose is easy, stylish ... it is often elegant in the way it depicts marriage, secrecy, and the fragile relationships between friends and spouses

A compelling story about the ties that bind us and the power of the written word.

'Exquisitely metered, intimate and yet profound, glimmeringly intelligent…A worthwhile, interesting and impressive achievement’ Edward Docx, Guardian 
 
What matters most: fidelity or art? Marriage or friendship? The wishes of the living or the talents of the dead? 
 
Literary executor Matt Holmes finds himself considering these questions sooner than he thinks when his friend, the poet Robert Pope, dies unexpectedly. A trail of clues Rob has left within his archives leads Matt to a series of shocking discoveries that begins to unsettle everything he thought he knew about his friend. Should Matt conceal what he has found or share it? After all, it’s not just Rob’s reputation that could be transformed forever…

Blake Morrison

Praise for The Executor

A novel of multi-level brilliance, which offers a smart, funny mystery built around ethical concerns over privacy and biography, while casting a beady eye on workplace politics and male midlife crises

Adept, attentive and occasionally beautiful ... When the poetry starts to break through, the book comes alive – reverberatingly, ravishingly so. Everything is illuminated... enter the revivifyin ...

Generously and skilfully written ... The unravelling of the novel’s moral perplexity is both ingenious and persuasive… A pleasing and very satisfying novel.

A novel of multi-level brilliance, which offers a smart, funny mystery built around ethical concerns over privacy and biography, while casting a beady eye on workplace politics and male midlife crises

Adept, attentive and occasionally beautiful ... When the poetry starts to break through, the book comes alive – reverberatingly, ravishingly so. Everything is illuminated... enter the revivifyin ...

Generously and skilfully written ... The unravelling of the novel’s moral perplexity is both ingenious and persuasive… A pleasing and very satisfying novel.

A novel of multi-level brilliance, which offers a smart, funny mystery built around ethical concerns over privacy and biography, while casting a beady eye on workplace politics and male midlife crises

Adept, attentive and occasionally beautiful ... When the poetry starts to break through, the book comes alive – reverberatingly, ravishingly so. Everything is illuminated... enter the revivifyin ...

Generously and skilfully written ... The unravelling of the novel’s moral perplexity is both ingenious and persuasive… A pleasing and very satisfying novel.

Books by Blake Morrison

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