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Reading lists

Where to start reading Rosemary Tonks

The Way Out of Berkeley Square

Her writing captured the pungent, punchy essence of that city in the Swinging Sixties

Nobody writes about angsty women like Tonks

The Tonks character is always trapped. As proud as Lucifer, and trapped. She may be on holiday in Italy with friends, or laid up with gout, she can as little escape as a character in a play can escape the footlights and the stage

Tonks was principled and ambitious about her writing, pushing a continental decadence into the oddly shaped crannies of bleak British humor

Rosemary Tonks (1928-2014) was a colourful figure in the London literary scene during the 1960s. She published two poetry collections, Notes on Cafés and Bedrooms and Iliad of Broken Sentences, and six novels, from Opium Fogs to The Halt During the Chase. Tonks wrote for the Observer, The Times, New York Review of Books, Listener, New Statesman and Encounter, and presented poetry programmes for the BBC.

Gut-wrenching, ingenious, absolutely hilarious, this is the rediscovered story of woman's desperate quest for freedom. 
 
'I'm thirty, and I'm stuck' 
 
Arabella is on an increasingly desperate quest for freedom from her overbearing father and her conspicuously absent brother. But her desire for self-actualisation only ends up leading her into the orbit of a happily married man. A spiky, self-conscious love affair begins, complete with awful dinner dates, devastating kisses and agonising introspection. Can Arabella realise what she wants? Can she escape the trap of being sexy, good and likable? 
 
Back in print after many decades, this is an outstanding novel by an extraordinary and little-known writer, the inimitable Rosemary Tonks. 
 
'Salted with wit and peppered with clever images' Guardian 
 
‘At their best, the novels are feats of Tonks’s earlier personality, shining and acrid in its ‘fierce hot-blooded sulkiness’… the glittering triumph of an unscathable ego’ London Review of Books 
 
‘Writing like this…is far too beautiful and accomplished to be kept off the shelf. It catches like nothing else the smogs, the rodentine genes, the murky post-War grays, the lurking sexual violence of London’ Michael Hoffman, Poetry Foundation

Businessmen as Lovers

Fun, witty and sun-soaked – literary cartwheels and seaside capers from the astoundingly brilliant mid-century writer who destroyed her own books. 
 
Great friends, Mimi and Caroline, are off on holiday to a beautiful Italian island. There they find themselves part of an eccentric cast of characters including their debonair host and his mistress, a relentless venture capitalist and a villain in the form of the local dentist. There is also Beetle, with whom Mimi is completely and simply in love. As everyone relaxes into island living and the demands of real life drift away, the holiday hijinks culminate in a very Mediterranean prank – the cutting down of the dentist’s prize lemon tree. 
 
Back in print after many decades, this is a glorious novel by an extraordinary and little-known writer, the inimitable Rosemary Tonks. 
 
'Everyone could do with a bit of Tonks in their lives' Stewart Lee 
 
‘Tonks throws out aphorisms, and scorn, like loose change’ London Review of Books

The brilliantly original rediscovered classic comedy of manners

The Bloater

The Bloater delights us by its wit, relish, and new-minted metaphors

Brittle, spry, spiky, amusing, a comedy of love... an original and distinctive flavour

[Tonks'] novels are valuable curios...of their time. They read like a strange hybrid of Muriel Spark and Beryl Bainbridge with a dash of Joe Orton

What a charismatic writer Rosemary Tonks is. The Bloater is lively and witty with some brilliant metaphors and descriptions, and so atmospheric. I really enjoyed it

It is about flirtation as a method of self-organization, and a crush as a method of self-torture. All of The Bloater, however-every single sentence-is funny

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY STEWART LEE 
 
'Should The Bloater be republished? Oh God, absolutely, it's fantastic' Stewart Lee 
 
Min works at the BBC as an audio engineer, where she is struggling to replicate the sound of a heartbeat. At home, other matters of the heart are making a mockery of life as Min knows it. 
 
Min has found herself the object of her lodger's affection. An internationally renowned opera singer she's nicknamed 'The Bloater', Min is disgusted and attracted to him in equal measure. But with a husband so invisible that she accidentally turns the lights off on him even when he's still in the room, Min can't quite bring herself to silence The Bloater's overtures. 
 
 Vain, materialistic, yet surprisingly tender, The Bloater is a sparklingly ironic comedy of manners for all flirtatious gossips who love to hate and hate to love. 
 
PRAISE FOR THE BLOATER 
 
'A wonderfully unromantic romantic comedy' Daily Telegraph 
 
'Uncommonly good' Guardian 
 
 'It is the perfect aperitif, makes you feel warm and careless and much, much happier' The Times

Rosemary Tonks

Brilliantly funny and brutal, this is the story of one woman’s escape from the clutches of polite society, by the incredible mid-century writer who destroyed her own books. 
 
‘No matter her insistence that she just dashed them off to make ‘a lot of red-hot money’ – Tonks's novels are thrillingly strange things. She had the knack’ London Review of Books 
 
Sophie’s mother knows exactly how to needle her. Sophie’s lover Philip knows how to stab her in the heart. She may be clever, charming and smart but is Sophie destined to be an eternal bit-part? 
 
After a particularly callous throwaway remark from Philip, Sophie knows she must break away – from him, from her mother, from the snobbery of her Hampstead Heath upbringing. Being good and agreeable has brought nothing but loneliness; setting out alone might finally bring Sophie satisfaction. 
 
Back in print after many decades, this novel is a piece of dynamite, written by an extraordinary and little-known writer, the inimitable Rosemary Tonks. 
 
'A bubbly, empathetic and ultimately lovely novel of a belated coming-of-age' New York Times 
 
'Nobody writes about angsty women like Tonks' The Millions

Rosemary Tonks

Praise for The Halt During the Chase

Her writing captured the pungent, punchy essence of that city in the Swinging Sixties

The Tonks character is always trapped. As proud as Lucifer, and trapped. She may be on holiday in Italy with friends, or laid up with gout, she can as little escape as a character in a play can escape the footlights ...

Books by Rosemary Tonks

Articles featuring Rosemary Tonks

Where to start reading Rosemary Tonks

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