Burntcoat

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There is a lot of gratuitous sex that seem unnecessary and it just gets too much especially as the author has already made clear the passion Edith and Halit feel for each other. But you’ve convinced me this is far more than a pandemic novel and the extracts are enticing so onto the wishlist it goes. Her expertise lies in the creation of large-scale wooden sculptures, using a technique learnt in Japan.

Twenty or thirty years on, the world is divided into two groups of people: those who escaped the virus and now have some protection through vaccination; and those who were infected and survived. It’s written in a nonlinear and in some places dreamlike way, to start with I found it confusing but it gets into a style that was suited to a woman looking back, remembering her childhood (also a difficult time as her mother suffered brain damage after a haemorrhage), her early adult years and now post pandemic facing probable death from the virus recurring. Edith, the main character, is an artist who lives with after-effects of a virus that resemble long-haul covid. The prose is utterly sublime throughout – graceful and elegant in tone, almost meditative at times, especially when conveying the intimacy between the two lovers. The novel’s setting’s some version of the real but the circumstances in which a novel virus, AG3, takes hold are far more dramatic - perhaps because its actions and consequences are distilled and filtered via Edith’s experiences.Unfortunately, due to prohibitive packaging rules/costs we do not curently dispatch to France or Spain. Sarah Hawkins travels, makes art, gets lovers, falls in love, deals with her mother, Rachel (the highlight of the book), and battles against the pandemic. Now Edith is finishing her final piece of work - another monumental piece as a memorial to those who died and will still die - final because the virus is resurfacing in her system and Edith knows she is dying. Like some of your other contributors here I was reluctant to embark on a pandemic themed novel when the current one is still raw in my memory. Certainly not because of the theme of coping as a child with a mother who, after a stroke, develops a rather brutal way of dealing with things, without compromises.

You introduced yourself, formally, succinctly gave the reasons for dual citizenship, your family’s expulsion during childhood. Friends with houses in the Victorian wards thought I was mad to want to live here, until I explained how much space I needed. Edith is a sculptor (and having been one myself, once, it was wonderful to read about making art which rang true), and lives in Burntcoat, the building where she has a huge studio to create her monumental pieces, and apartment above.Some from the virus’s ravaging of Edith’s quarantine lover, Halit, and some from Halit’s sexual ravaging of Edith. She isolates herself in her immense studio, known as Burntcoat, with Halit, the lover she barely knows. Edith’s mother was a popular novelist before her stroke (and it isn’t until the future scenes that her books will be reassessed as “works of merit”, the “Gothic label stripped off like cheap varnish”; a dismissive term that had been “used for women whose work the establishment enjoys but doesn’t respect” as only “men are the existentialists”.