Kirjahaku

A lyrical and beautifully realised novel about a blind man's experiences of the world around him, from the acclaimed author of Ghost MacIndoe. Edward Morton, a blind translator, arrives at the Oak, an ailing spa hotel in the west of England, intending to stay for a few days to visit his family and to work. The manager of the Oak, Malcolm Caldecott, is preparing for the closure of the hotel, and for the visit of Stephanie, the daughter he has not seen for eight years. Eloni Dobra, a chambermaid at the Oak, is striving to establish a life in England, and to free herself of a burden that is crucial to her relationship both with her employer and with Edward Morton. As the nature of that burden becomes clearer, each of these four protagonists and the absent fifth – Morton's lover – move towards a crisis and, like the Oak itself, towards an uncertain future. Spanning the last three weeks of the Oak's existence, Invisible explores multiple voices – voices in conversation, voices in writing, on tape, in memory. It's an investigation of our perception of the world and our place in it, of the pleasures and deceptions of the senses, of the uses of language, of the lure of nostalgia and the difficulties of living in the present. Above all, like Buckley's previous novel, Ghost MacIndoe, it's a lyrical celebration of the transient, and an original study of love.

A stunning novel which examines our fears, prejudices and desires, from the author of 'Ghost MacIndoe' and 'Invisible'.

A novel of intense, flickering intelligence, Tell is structured as a series of interviews with a woman who worked as a gardener for a wealthy businessman and art collector who has mysteriously disappeared, and may or may not have committed suicide. What might be a gloomy subject is instead alluring, lit from within by a lively deep knowledge of human nature: Buckley's eye for motivations brings to mind a Thomas Hardy for our atomized 21st-century. A thrilling novel of strange, intoxicating immediacy, Tell carries the pleasures of exciting new gossip enjoyed with a rare old cognac by a crackling fire. Calling his work "captivating," John Banville has asked: "Why isn't Jonathan Buckley better known?"

Daniel Brennan, approaching the premature end of his life, retreats to a room in his brother's suburban house. To divert himself and to entertain Ellen, his carer, he writes the journal that is Telescope, blurring truth, gossip and fiction in vignettes of his own life and the lives of those close to him. Above all he focuses on his siblings: mercurial Celia, whose life as a teacher in Italy seems to have run aground, and kindly Charlie, the entrepreneur of the family. Enriched with remarkable anecdotes and observations on topics ranging from tattoos and Tokyo street fashion to early French photography, Telescope is a startlingly original and moving book, a glimpse of the world through the eyes of a connoisseur of vicarious experience.

A story of remembrance, desire, and the occult by one of Britain's finest contemporary novelists. The lapping of the waves was a lesson in mortality. Sometimes the corrective would work, and his turmoil would recede. The sound secured him, as the contemplation of a skull might make a penitent secure. And sometimes it was more than a corrective: it brought elation . . . "Live," it urged, with each whisper of the water. "Live; live; live." Leaning forward, Lucas repeated the words with too much fervor, to make sure that the lesson was not lost on me. This was his mission: not to help people to keep hold of the past, but to help them to live. Jonathan Buckley's latest novel, Live; live; live, is a subtly suspenseful and slow-burning story about the occult as a source of psychological and existential truth. Lucas Judd is a man with a gift: He hears the dead speaking. Joshua lives next door, just a boy when he first meets his mysterious, kind neighbor. But as he grows up, his instructive friendship with Lucas is gradually altered by desire: Joshua's attraction to, then obsession with Erin, the much younger woman with whom Lucas lives. The nature of her relationship to Lucas is unclear and unclassifiable: Is it erotic, platonic, pedagogical? And is Lucas a sham or a kind of shaman? Is Joshua really a reliable witness? At the heart of this powerful and resonant novel are timely questions about narrative truth and timeless questions about life, death, and belief. There are no certainties in Live; live; live, only mutability, permeability, and the beautifully observed cadence of change.

The co-winner of the 2022 Novel Prize, Tell is a probing, exuberant and complex examination of the ways in which we make stories of our lives and of other peopleâ??s.

On losing her father, Teresa returns to a small town on the Greek coast – the same place she visited when grieving her mother nine years ago. She immerses herself again in the life of the town, observing the inhabitants going about their business, a quiet backdrop for her reckoning with herself. An episode from her first visit resurfaces vividly – her encounter with John, a man struggling to come to terms with the violent death of his nephew. Soon Teresa encounters some of the people she met last time around: Petros, an eccentric mechanic, whose life story may or may not be part of John's; the beautiful Niko, a diving instructor; and Xanthe, a waitress in one of the cafés on the leafy town square. They talk about their longings, regrets, the passing of time, their sense of who they are. Artfully constructed, absorbing and insightful, One Boat is a brilliant novel grappling with questions of identity, free will, guilt and responsibility.

An epistolary novel about a concert pianist and a young man’s attempt to write his biography. Thomas Lang was an outstanding concert pianist. He was elusive, arrogant, depressive, mysterious, and a genius. He died mysteriously, probably by his own hand. Bit by bit, in a volley of letters between his would-be biographer and Lang’s brother Christopher, his life is pieced together and the real Thomas Lang begins to emerge. Jonathan Buckley’s first novel ponders the nature of biography, the question of what a life is and, more particularly, what a life becomes once it is finished, who that life belongs to. Confident, endlessly inventive, often very funny, it is one of the most assured debuts in British fiction for some time.

The small Tuscan town of Castelluccio is preparing for its annual festival, a spectacular pageant in which a leading role will be taken by the self-exiled English painter Gideon Westfall. A man proudly out of step with modernity, Westfall is regarded by some as a maestro, but in Castelluccio - as in the wider art world - he has his enemies, and his niece - just arrived from England - is no great admirer either. At the same time a local girl is missing, a disappearance that seems to implicate the artist. But the life and art of Gideon Westfall form just one strand of Nostalgia, a novel that teems with incidents and characters, from religious visionaries to folk heroes. Constantly shifting between the panoramic and the intimate, between the past and the present, Nostalgia is as intricately structured as a symphony, interweaving the narratives of history, legend, architecture - and much more - in a kaleidoscope of facts and invention.

A woman named Naomi arrives at her sister's house, intending, it seems, to say goodbye. She is abandoning her city life for a remote Scottish retreat, which she will share with a man called Bernát, whom she considers some kind of visionary. In a sequence of stories filtered through multiple re-tellings, she illuminates the character of this elusive individual. One story seems of special significance: about Afonso, an Amazon boatman, who could be the last speaker of his mother tongue, a language of apparently unique simplicity and precision. Bernat and Naomi are not, however, the only storytellers here. Naomi's sister, Kate, is herself working on a novel that begins as a ghost story, but ends up as something rather different: The river is the river.

In the small hours of January 1st, a man begins to write, having watched Le Grand Concert de la Nuit, a film in which a former lover - Imogen - plays a major role. For the next year, he writes something every day. His journal is a ritual of commemoration and an investigation of the character of Imogen and her relationships - with himself; with her family and friends; with other lovers. Imogen is an elusive subject, and The Great Concert of the Night is an intricate text, mixing scenes from the writer's memory and the present day, and scenes from Imogen's films, with observations on a range of subjects, from the visions of female saints to the history of medicine and the festivals of ancient Rome. But one subject comes to occupy him above all: what happens when a person becomes a character on the page.

The lapping of the sea was a lesson in mortality...' Live,' he heard, with each whisper of the water. 'Live; live; live.' Through Lucas Judd, the dead make contact with the living, or so he believes, or professes to believe. He is a man of such penetrating insight and empathy that many have faith in his gift. They confide in him, and find consolation. Even Joshua, his sceptical young neighbour, seems drawn by his compassionate sophistry. But when Erin, a much younger woman, shadowed by recent grief, moves in with Lucas, the focus of Joshua's fascination begins to shift. Such are the surface ripples of this poignant and precisely attuned novel. Its depths reveal the largest of themes - mortality and love, and the way in which the souls of those with whom we shared our experiences inhabit our memories. Characters appear and recede, to reappear once again as the narrative shifts direction. Living voices merge with the multitudes of the dead, leaving their trace or fading away, for now. Live; Live; Live is a beautiful, deeply resonant work by a novelist at the height of his powers.

Everything is buried for a reason. Richard and Juliette Willoughby live in an old farmhouse in North Yorkshire. The place has been called Starve Acre since anyone can remember. Nothing grows there.

After losing her father, Teresa returns to a small town on the Greek coast--the same place she visited when grieving her mother nine years ago. Soon, she encounters some of the people she met last time around: John, a man struggling to come to terms with the violent death of his nephew; Petros, an eccentric mechanic whose story may have something to do with John's; Niko, a local diving instructor; and Xanthe, a waitress in one of the caf s on the leafy town square. They talk about their longings, regrets, the passing of time, and their sense of who they are. Artfully constructed, absorbing, and insightful, One Boat is a brilliant novel grappling with questions of identity, free will, guilt, and responsibility.

"Why isn't Jonathan Buckley better known? His novel of love, death and melancholy comedy, The Great Concert of the Night, is captivating." --John Banville David has just spent New Year's Eve alone, watching Le Grand Concert de la Nuit, a film in which his former lover Imogen starred. In the early hours of the new year, consoled and tormented by her ethereal presence, he begins to write. What follows is a brilliantly various journal, chronicling a year in the life of a thinking man. David works as a curator at the ailing Sanderson-Perceval Museum in southern England, whose small collection of porcelain, musical instruments, crystals, velvet mushrooms, and glass jellyfish is as eccentric and idiosyncratic as the long-dead collectors' tastes. David himself is a connoisseur of the derelict and nonutilitarian, of objects removed from the flow of time. Refusing the imposed order of a straightforward chronology, his journal moves fluidly back and forth in time, filled with fragments of life remembered, imagined, and recorded, from memories of his past life with Imogen or with his ex-wife, Samantha, to reflections on the lives and relics of female saints or the history of medicine. There are quotations from Seneca, Meister Eckhart, and the Goncourt brothers mixed in with the equally compelling imagined words of fictional film directors, actors, and, always, the fascinating Imogen, who is alive now only "in the perpetual present of the sentence." In The Great Concert of the Night, Jonathan Buckley expertly interweaves sexual despair, cultural critique, the plot lines of one man's quietly brilliant life, and the problems and paradoxes of writing, especially writing about and to the dead.