Imprint: Vintage
Published: 07/05/2015
ISBN: 9780099554943
Length: 288 Pages
Dimensions: 198mm x 18mm x 129mm
Weight: 202g
RRP: £9.99
In this exquisite, haunting book, John Burnside describes his coming of age from the industrial misery of Cowdenbeath and Corby to the new world of Cambridge. This is a memoir of romance – of lost love and the love of being lost – darkened by threat, illuminated by glamour.
The old Scots word ‘glamour’ means magical charm, and the first time he was played I Put a Spell on You, John Burnside thought he had never heard a more beautiful song – it was an enchantment, a fascination that would turn to obsession. Implicit in the song were all the ambiguities that intrigued him – love, possession and danger – and this book is an exploration of the darker side of glamour and attraction. Beginning with memories of a brutal murder, the book follows the author through a series of uncanny encounters with ‘lost girls’, with brilliant digressions on murder ballads, voodoo, acid and insomnia, and a cast that includes Kafka and Narcissus, Diane Arbus and Mel Lyman, The Four Tops and Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, and time spent lost in the Arctic Circle, black-and-white films and a mental institution. Ending with the tender summoning of the ghost of his dying mother as she sings along to the radio in her empty kitchen, I Put a Spell on You is a book about memory, about the other side of love: a book of secrets and wonders.
Imprint: Vintage
Published: 07/05/2015
ISBN: 9780099554943
Length: 288 Pages
Dimensions: 198mm x 18mm x 129mm
Weight: 202g
RRP: £9.99
A marvellously meandering, digressive study of the nature of love… Burnside has a lovely garrulousness that is distinctively his own… Exact and enthralling.
[An] indirect, peculiar, consuming memoir… Full of wonders.
A wise and wryly glum autobiography written in a highly rewarding, pared-back style.
Captivating and unsettling… A work of scalding honesty.
Intoxicating… Remarkable… A long-player that resonates long after the stylus has lifted.