Rupert Thomson - Free Library Land Online

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Set on the eve of the financial crash of 2008, this evocative novel is made up of three stories linked by time and place, and also by the moving, unexpected interactions of a rich cast of characters.

Barcelona Dreaming is narrated, in turn, by an English woman who runs a gift shop, an alcoholic jazz pianist, and a translator tormented by unrequited love, all of whose lives will be changed forever. Underpinning the novel, and casting a long shadow, is a crime committed against a young Moroccan immigrant.

Exploring themes of addiction, racism, celebrity, immigration, and self-delusion, and fueled by a longing for the unattainable and a nostalgia for what is about to be lost, Barcelona Dreaming is a love letter to one of the world’s most beautiful cities and a powerful and poignant fable for our uncertain times.]]> Thu, 12 Aug 2021 23:50:33 +0300 Soft https://science.library.land/rupert-thomson/425559-soft.html https://science.library.land/rupert-thomson/425559-soft.html Soft

The objective of advertising is to change the behaviour of the consumer so they purchase more of the product. That, at any rate, is the theory. But Jimmy Lyle may have taken things a bit too far with his controversial strategy for the UK launch of Kwench! When the new orange soft-drink hits the streets, it triggers a series of events he could not have anticipated. Certainly he never dreamed it would plunge him into the twilight world of synchronised swimming. Nor did he think it would end in murder ...]]> Wed, 14 Sep 1977 03:24:10 +0300 Katherine Carlyle https://science.library.land/rupert-thomson/425557-katherine_carlyle.html https://science.library.land/rupert-thomson/425557-katherine_carlyle.html

"Katherine Carlyle is a masterpiece." --Philip Pullman, best-selling author of the His Dark Materials trilogy

"[T]his road trip through a snow dome of mesmeric hallucinations is Thomson at his best." --Richard Flanagan, author of The Narrow Road to the Deep North, winner of the 2015 Man Booker Prize

Katherine Carlyle is Rupert Thomson's breakthrough novel. Written in the beautifully spare, lucid, and cinematic prose Thomson is known for, and powered by his natural gift for storytelling, it uses the modern techniques of IVF to throw new light on the myth of origins. It is a profound and moving novel about identity, the search for personal meaning, and how we are loved.

Unmoored by her mother's death and feeling her father to be an increasingly distant figure, Katherine Carlyle abandons the set course of her life and starts out on a mysterious journey to the ends of the world. Instead of going to college, she...]]> Fri, 27 Nov 2015 03:24:08 +0200 Never Anyone But You https://science.library.land/rupert-thomson/392395-never_anyone_but_you.html https://science.library.land/rupert-thomson/392395-never_anyone_but_you.html

The true story of a love affair between two extraordinary women becomes a literary tour deforce in this novel that recreates the surrealist movement in Paris and the horrors of the two world wars with a singular incandescence and intimacy.
In the years preceding World War I, two young women meet, by chance, in a provincial town in France. Suzanne Malherbe, a shy seventeen-year-old with a talent for drawing, is completely entranced by the brilliant but troubled Lucie Schwob, who comes from a family of wealthy Jewish intellectuals. They embark on a clandestine love affair, terrified they will be discovered, but then, in an astonishing twist of fate, the mother of one marries the father of the other. As "sisters" they are finally free of suspicion, and, hungry for a more stimulating milieu, they move to Paris at a moment when art, literature, and politics blend in an explosive cocktail.
Having reinvented themselves as Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore, they move in the most...]]> Sun, 25 Nov 2018 11:47:36 +0200 The Book of Revelation https://science.library.land/rupert-thomson/426315-the_book_of_revelation.html https://science.library.land/rupert-thomson/426315-the_book_of_revelation.html

]]> Tue, 27 Nov 2001 04:01:20 +0200 Dreams of Leaving https://science.library.land/rupert-thomson/425554-dreams_of_leaving.html https://science.library.land/rupert-thomson/425554-dreams_of_leaving.html

New Egypt is a village somewhere in the South of England. A village that nobody has ever left. Peach, the sadistic chief of police, makes sure of that. Then, one misty morning, a young couple secretly set their baby son Moses afloat on the river, in a basket made of rushes. Years later, Moses is living above a nightclub, mixing with drug-dealers, thieves and topless waitresses. He knows nothing about his past - but it is catching up with him nevertheless, and it threatens to put his life in danger. Terror, magic and farce all have a part to play as the worlds of Peach and Moses slowly converge.]]> Fri, 27 Nov 1987 03:24:04 +0300 Air and Fire https://science.library.land/rupert-thomson/425560-air_and_fire.html https://science.library.land/rupert-thomson/425560-air_and_fire.html

At the turn of the century Théophile and Suzanne Valence sail into the Mexican copper-mining town of Santa Sofìa. Théo has travelled here to build a metal church designed by his mentor, the great engineer Gustave Eiffel. His wife Suzanne, wayward and graced with the gift of clairvoyance is deeply in love and has insisted on accompanying him. But the magical landscape inspires no answering passion in Théo. In her loneliness she turns to the American gold prospector Wilson Pharaoh, and soon he, like the town and its inhabitants, falls under her spell, an enchantment as seductive as Suzanne herself.]]> Sat, 27 Nov 1993 03:24:13 +0200 Divided Kingdom https://science.library.land/rupert-thomson/425558-divided_kingdom.html https://science.library.land/rupert-thomson/425558-divided_kingdom.html

It is winter, somewhere in the United Kingdom, and an eight-year-old boy is removed from his home and family in the middle of the night. He learns that he is the victim of an extraordinary experiment. In an attempt to reform society, the government has divided the population into four groups, each representing a different personality type. The land, too, has been divided into quarters. Borders have been established, reinforced by concrete walls, armed guards and rolls of razor wire. Plunged headlong into this brave new world, the boy tries to make the best of things, unaware that ahead of him lies a truly explosive moment, a revelation that will challenge everything he believes in and will, in the end, put his very life in jeopardy ...]]> Sun, 27 Nov 2005 03:24:09 +0200 Death of a Murderer https://science.library.land/rupert-thomson/425555-death_of_a_murderer.html https://science.library.land/rupert-thomson/425555-death_of_a_murderer.html

]]> Tue, 27 Nov 2007 03:24:05 +0200 The Insult https://science.library.land/rupert-thomson/426316-the_insult.html https://science.library.land/rupert-thomson/426316-the_insult.html

It is a Thursday evening. After work Martin Blom drives to the supermarket to buy some groceries. As he walks back to his car, a shot rings out. When he wakes up he is blind. His neurosurgeon, Bruno Visser, tells him that his loss of sight is permanent and that he must expect to experience shock, depression, self-pity, even suicidal thoughts before his rehabilitation is complete. But it doesn't work out quite like that. One spring evening, while Martin is practising in the clinic gardens with his new white cane, something miraculous happens ...]]> Wed, 27 Nov 1996 04:01:23 +0200 Secrecy https://science.library.land/rupert-thomson/425556-secrecy.html https://science.library.land/rupert-thomson/425556-secrecy.html Secrecy

]]> Wed, 27 Nov 2013 03:24:06 +0200 The Five Gates of Hell https://science.library.land/rupert-thomson/426314-the_five_gates_of_hell.html https://science.library.land/rupert-thomson/426314-the_five_gates_of_hell.html

There were very few land burials in Moon Beach. It was considered old-fashioned, unhealthy and something that only happened to the poor. Instead the dead were buried in ocean cemeteries, twelve miles out. A special festival was held every year in their honour. Children loved it. They were given white chocolate bones, marzipan skulls and ice-cream coffins on a stick. There were costume parties too. You had to wear something blue because that was the colour people went when they were buried under the sea. You could paint your hands and face if you liked, or even dye your hair. That's what people did in Moon Beach. Turned blue once a year. And then they turned blue forever...]]> Wed, 27 Nov 1991 04:01:19 +0200 This Party's Got to Stop https://science.library.land/rupert-thomson/275575-this_partys_got_to_stop.html https://science.library.land/rupert-thomson/275575-this_partys_got_to_stop.html

In his first venture into non-fiction, the celebrated novelist Rupert Thomson has produced one of the most extraordinary and unforgettable memoirs of recent years. On a warm, sunny day in July 1964, Thomson returned home from school to discover that his mother had died suddenly while playing tennis. Twenty years later, Thomson and his brothers receive word that their father, who suffered chronic lung damage during the war, has died alone in hospital. In an attempt to come to terms both with their own loss and with their parents’ legacies, the three brothers move back into their father’s house. The time they spend in this decadent, anarchic commune leads to a rift between Thomson and his youngest brother, a rift that will not be addressed for more than two decades. This Party’s Got to Stop works Thomson’s memories into a powerful mosaic that reveals the fragility of family life in graphic and often heartbreaking detail. It is both a love letter to a lost brother and a chronicle of the murderousness and longing that can characterize blood relationships.]]> Fri, 19 Nov 2010 12:55:48 +0200