Cryers Hill

A beautifully written, profoundly moving, observantly funny, deeply English novel by one of the most talented prose writers I have read in years

Mercurial, deft and wondrous in its sentences and uncanny descriptions...A considerable achievement by a daring writer who's come fully into her own

Kitty Aldridge's language captures the casual brutality of childhood like a butterfly in a net

Aldridge herself loads the novel with verbal twists and turns that leave its texture as ridged, layered and undulating as the Chilterns themselves

[The] carefully observed, spirited portraits form much of the considerable charm of this powerful, slow-burning second novel

Kitty Aldridge was born in the Middle East but grew up in England. A graduate of the Drama Centre, London, she has since worked in theatre, film, and television as an actress and writer. Her first novel, Pop (Cape, 2001), was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2002 and shortlisted for the Pendleton May First Novel Award 2002. Her most recent novels are Cryers Hill and A Trick I Learned from Dead Men. Her short story, Arrivederci Les, won the Bridport Short Story Prize 2011 (Bridport Prize Anthology 2011).

In July 1934, Walter Brown went alone to the woodland pond. He saw his girl swimming there. He watched her floating and saw how white her skin was in the green water, her belly, her breasts, her pond-tangled hair. Then she turned over like an otter and dived down. She did not come up again. In July 1969, Sean Matthews finds himself in the very same woodland, where he witnesses an event he later cannot bear to remember. Two boys, growing up in the same village thirty-five years apart, have each seen something they shouldn't. 
 
Hailed by Salman Rushie on the publication of her first novel, Pop, Cryers Hill confirms Kitty Aldridge as a writer of immense talent, possessing the rare gift of enabling us to see the world anew.

A brilliant first novel set in the 1970s, from an Orange Prize longlisted author.

Pop is an unforgettable creation... By some distance the most eloquent first novel I have read this century...If literary London can lionise Zadie Smith, it should pay Kitty Aldridge the same compliment. She has star quality

An authentic, gentle and genuinely funny account of ordinary life... This novel is at once life-affirming and important

Aldridge combines rich, poetic prose with an impressively light touch

A moving story, told with wit and invention, and the language shimmers in the heat-haze of sadness and loss. A truly original first novel

Kitty Aldridge is a real discovery, a writer of precision, delicacy and wit, and her first novel is a rare delight

Kitty Aldridge was born in the Middle East but grew up in England. A graduate of the Drama Centre, London, she has since worked in theatre, film, and television as an actress and writer. Her first novel, Pop (Cape, 2001), was longlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction 2002 and shortlisted for the Pendleton May First Novel Award 2002. Her second novel, Cryers Hill, was published by Cape in 2007. Her short story, Arrivederci Les, won the Bridport Short Story Prize 2011 (Bridport Prize Anthology 2011). Her most recent novel is the critically-acclaimed A Trick I Learned From Dead Men.

During the heatwave of 1975, Maggie, thirteen, goes to live with her grandfather, Pop, in Sutton Coldfield. Pop's mission is to know everything: the annual Fox and Dogs pub quiz is looming. Maggie doesn't know everything, but she does know about the great comedians - Ken Dodd, Tommy Cooper, Eric and Ernie - about country music, Shirley Bassie, and about how her mother died. 
 
Pop sings with the poetry of the suburbs and aches with the poignancy of adolescence. Kitty Aldridge has a wonderfully distinctive voice and a deliciously sharp eye for the extraordinariness of ordinary lives.

Kitty Aldridge

Both tragic yet somehow life-affirming, her novel holds you to the end

A dark, but oddly funny novel... Sad, funny and very moving

A Trick I Learned From Dead Men is a wonderful book, written with a mixture of pathos and bleak humour that brings to mind classic television comedies such as The Office... Lee’s narration seems beautifully true: it is stop-start, cliché ridden, and marked by that peculiarly British tendency to point out the stray cloud in an otherwise spotless sky

Aldridge beautifully captures Lee’s thought patterns... Her research is impeccable, and the quirky portrait of funeral home routine will appeal to fans of the TV series Six Feet Under

Aldridge is a skilled observer and the novel is full of detailed, sometimes strangely beautiful descriptions... Aldridge shows her eye for detail: there is joy to be found in the mundanities of day-to-day life

A wonderfully funny, original novel ... joyous and life-affirming

This small but perfectly formed third novel from Kitty Aldridge is over too soon but is impressively accomplished, nailing the distinctive voice of its protagonist… Inventive coming-of-age tale

Kitty Aldridge’s latest novel mixes pathos and bathos in industrial quantities…he [Lee Hart] is an immensely likeable protagonist and Aldridge has absolutely captured his engagingly open inner voice

An uplifting tale of life after death. Dead good

Wonderful… I am completely convinced by Lee and drawn along with his narrative voice which Kitty Aldridge has pitched to perfection… Kitty has taken a taboo subject and achieved that fine balance, writing engagingly and openly, and with great sensitivity and humour about something most of us just don't like to think or talk about

Aldridge’s writing is a rare find: startlingly original without being showy, skilfully crafted but not selfconsciously literary, a genuine, honest voice… Harrowing and hilarious, profound but unpretentious, this book conjures up a compelling world and an eminently likeable protagonist. For all the dead bodies and thwarted lives, it is surprisingly uplifting

Longlisted for the Womens Prize for Fiction 2013 
 
After the disappearance of their father and the sudden death of their mother, Lee Hart and his deaf brother, Ned, imagine all is lost until Lee starts an apprenticeship at the local funeral home. Here, in the company of a crooning ex-publican, a closet pole vaulter, a terminally-ill hearse driver, and the dead of their local town, old wounds begin to heal and love arrives as a beautiful florist aboard a 'Fleurtations' delivery van, and Lee discovers there is life after death after all.

Kitty Aldridge

Praise for A Trick I Learned from Dead Men

Both tragic yet somehow life-affirming, her novel holds you to the end

A dark, but oddly funny novel... Sad, funny and very moving

A Trick I Learned From Dead Men is a wonderful book, written with a mixture of pathos and bleak humour that brings to mind classic television comedies such as The Office... Lee’s narration seems beauti ...

Both tragic yet somehow life-affirming, her novel holds you to the end

A dark, but oddly funny novel... Sad, funny and very moving

A Trick I Learned From Dead Men is a wonderful book, written with a mixture of pathos and bleak humour that brings to mind classic television comedies such as The Office... Lee’s narration seems beauti ...

Both tragic yet somehow life-affirming, her novel holds you to the end

A dark, but oddly funny novel... Sad, funny and very moving

A Trick I Learned From Dead Men is a wonderful book, written with a mixture of pathos and bleak humour that brings to mind classic television comedies such as The Office... Lee’s narration seems beauti ...

Books by Kitty Aldridge

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