Recommendations based on "A Severed Head"

SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER 1 BESTSELLERFrom the bestselling author of Autumn and Winter, as well as the Baileys Prize-winning How to be both, comes the next installment in the remarkable, once-in-a-generation masterpiece, the Seasonal Quartet'Luminous, generous, hope-filled . . .The third book in Ali Smith's seasonal quartet is her best yet, a dazzling hymn to hope, uniting the past and present with a chorus of voices... [Ali Smith] is lighting us a path out of the nightmarish now' - ObserverWhat unites Katherine Mansfield, Charlie Chaplin, Shakespeare, Rilke, Beethoven, Brexit, the present, the past, the north, the south, the east, the west, a man mourning lost times, a woman trapped in modern times?Spring. The great connective.With an eye to the migrancy of story over time, and riffing on Pericles, one of Shakespeare's most resistant and rollicking works, Ali Smith tells the impossible tale of an impossible time. In a time of walls and lockdown Smith opens the door.The time we're living in is changing nature. Will it change the nature of story?Hope springs eternal.

A sensitive portrayal of the healing process that took place in the aftermath of the First World War, J.L. Carr's A Month in the Country includes an introduction by Penelope Fitzgerald, author of Offshore, in Penguin Modern Classics. A damaged survivor of the First World War, Tom Birkin finds refuge in the quiet village church of Oxgodby where he is to spend the summer uncovering a huge medieval wall-painting. Immersed in the peace and beauty of the countryside and the unchanging rhythms of village life he experiences a sense of renewal and belief in the future. Now an old man, Birkin looks back on the idyllic summer of 1920, remembering a vanished place of blissful calm, untouched by change, a precious moment he has carried with him through the disappointments of the years. Adapted into a 1987 film starring Colin Firth, Natasha Richardson and Kenneth Branagh, A Month in the Country traces the slow revival of the primeval rhythms of life so cruelly disorientated by the Great War Joseph Lloyd Carr (1912-1994) attended the village school at Carlton Miniott in the North Riding and Castleford Secondary School. A head teacher, publisher and novelist, his books include A Day in Summer (1964); The Harpole Report (1972); A Month in the Country (1980), which won the Guardian Fiction prize and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize; The Battle of Pollock's Crossing (1985), which was also shortlisted for the Booker Prize; What Hetty Did (1988) and Harpole and Foxberrow, General Publishers (1992). If you enjoyed A Month in the Country, you might like Ford Madox Ford's Parade's End, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. 'Unlike anything else in modern English literature' D.J. Taylor, Spectator

A Moveable Feast remains one of Ernest Hemingway's most beloved works. It is his classic memoir of Paris in the 1920s, filled with irreverent portraits of other expatriate luminaries such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein; tender memories of his first wife, Hadley; and insightful recollections of his own early experiments with his craft. It is a literary feast, brilliantly evoking the exuberant mood of Paris after World War I and the youthful spirit, unbridled creativity, and unquenchable enthusiasm that Hemingway himself epitomized.

Hemingway's memories of his life as an unknown writer living in Paris in the 1920s are deeply personal, warmly affectionate and full of wit. He recalls the time when, poor, happy and writing in cafes, he discovered his vocation.

Ethan Allen Hawley has lost the acquisitive spirit of his wealthy and enterprising forebears, a long line of proud New England sea captains and Pilgrims. Scarred by failure, Ethan works as a grocery clerk in a store his family once owned. But his wife is restless and his teenage children troubled and hungry for the material comforts he cannot provide. Then a series of unusual events reignites Ethan’s ambition, and he is pitched on to a bold course where all scruples are put aside...Steinbeck’s searing examination of the evil influences of money, immorality, greed and ambition on American drew acclaim from the Nobel Committee who hailed him as an 'independent expounder of the truth'.

“Dramatic, adventurous, heroic, romantic. . . these historical chronicles, legends, myths, tall tales and fables, featuring warriors, kings, monks, explorers and clever common folk, imaginatively tell the history of Ireland.” — Philadelphia InquirerThis New York Times bestselling epic is an unforgettable tour de force that marries the intimate, passionate texture of the Irish spirit with a historical scope that is sweeping and resplendent. Storyteller extraordinaire Frank Delaney takes his readers on a journey through the history of Ireland, stopping along the way to evoke the dramatic events and personalities so critical to shaping the Irish experience.In the winter of 1951, a storyteller, the last practitioner of an honored, centuries-old tradition, arrives at the home of nine-year-old Ronan O'Mara in the Irish countryside. For three wonderful evenings, the old gentleman enthralls his assembled local audience with narratives of foolish kings, fabled saints, and Ireland's enduring accomplishments before moving on. But these nights change young Ronan forever, setting him on a years-long pursuit of the elusive, itinerant storyteller and the glorious tales that are no less than the saga of his tenacious and extraordinary isle.

Alice Munro's territory is the farms and semi-rural towns of south-western Ontario. In these dazzling stories she deals with the self-discovery of adolescence, the joys and pains of love and the despair and guilt of those caught in a narrow existence. And in sensitively exploring the lives of ordinary men and women, she makes us aware of the universal nature of their fears, sorrows and aspirations.Contents- Walker Brothers Cowboy- The Shining Houses- Images- Thanks for the Ride- The Office- An Ounce of Cure- The Time of Death- Day of the Butterfly- Boys and Girls- Postcard- Red Dress -1946- Sunday Afternoon- A Trip to the Coast- The Peace of Utrecht- Dance of the Happy Shades

The magnificent final volume of one of the most widely acclaimed fictional masterpieces of the postwar era.Few books have been awaited as eagerly as Clea, the sensuous and electrically suspenseful novel that resolves the enigmas of the Alexandria Quartet. Some years and one world war was after his bizarre liaisons with Melissa and Justine, the Irish émigré Darley becomes enmeshed with the bisexual artist Clea. That affair not only changes the lovers, it transforms the dead as well, revealing new layers of duplicity and desire, perversity and pathos in Lawrence Durrell’s masterly construction.“A massive, marvelously concrete, deeply felt statement of faith. . . . His style glows with the mineral deposits of many cultures. One of the most important works of our time has come to an end.”—The New York Times Book Review“Clea rounds out the tetralogy with grace, beauty, and stunning impact. . . . This rich, exciting fare is Durrell’s finest writing style, a manner of writing few living authors can equal. . . . A magnificent achievement.”—The Detriot News“The reader is carried along on a current of superbly accomplished prose, as flexible and colorful as that of any contemporary writer. . . . What Durrell has given us is well worth having.”—San Francisco Chronicle

A beautiful clothbound edition of Evelyn Waugh's classic novel of duty and desire set against the backdrop of the faded glory of the English aristocracy in the run-up to the Second World War.The most nostalgic and reflective of Evelyn Waugh's novels, Brideshead Revisited looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmains and the rapidly disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by Sebastian Flyte at Oxford, then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to recognise his spiritual and social distance from them.'Lush and evocative ... Expresses at once the profundity of change and the indomitable endurance of the human spirit'The Times

The final book in the landmark Cazalet Chronicles, recently broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It is the 1950s and as the Cazalets’ beloved matriarch, the Duchy, passes away, she takes with her the last remnants of a world – of great houses and servants, of class and tradition – in which the Cazalets have thrived. Louise, now divorced, becomes entangled in a painful affair; while Polly and Clary must balance marriage and motherhood with their own ideas and ambitions. Hugh and Edward, now in their sixties, are feeling ill-equipped for this modern world; while Villy, long abandoned by her husband, must at last learn to live independently. But it is Rachel, who has always lived for others, who will face her greatest challenges yet . . . Events will converge at Christmas at Home Place; on which a new generation of Cazalets will descend. Only one thing is certain, nothing will ever be the same again . . . ‘Elizabeth Jane Howard is one of those novelists who shows, through her work, what the novel is for . . . She helps us to do the necessary thing – open our eyes and our hearts’ Hilary Mantel