Helm
'Incandescently good.' Sarah Perry
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5,0 • 1 note
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- 13,99 €
Description de l’éditeur
A Guardian,Observer, New Statesman, Financial Times, Independent, BBC and Daily Mail Book of the Year
'Vital, fierce and free.' Financial Times
'Incandescently good.' Sarah Perry
'Pulsing with life and lyricism.' Spectator
'Fiercely exuberant.' Observer
'Delightfully playful.' Andrew Miller
'A truly astonishing thing.' George Monbiot
A wondrous, elemental novel from 'a writer of show-stopping genius'. Guardian
SHORTLISTED FOR THE GOLDSMITHS PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE
Helm is a ferocious, mischievous wind - a subject of folklore and wonder - who has blasted the sublime landscape of the Eden Valley since the very dawn of time.
This is Helm's life story, formed from the chronicles of those the wind enchanted: the Neolithic tribe who tried to placate it, the Dark Age wizard priest who wanted to banish it, the Victorian steam engineer who attempted to capture it - and the farmer's daughter who fell in love. But now Dr Selima Sutar, surrounded by measuring instruments, alone in her observation hut, fears the end is nigh.
Vital and audacious, Helm is the elemental tale of a unique life force - and of a relationship: between nature and people, neither of whom can weather life without the other.
'Sarah Hall's writing has conquered the body and the soul and now it conquers the wind itself.' DAISY JOHNSON
'I can think of no other British writer whose talent so consistently thrills, surprises and staggers.' BENJAMIN MYERS
'I'm awed . I wouldn't think a novel could be at once so taut and so multifarious, expanding one's sense of what fiction can do.' SARAH MOSS
'Helm is as vital, fierce and free as the phenomenon it describes.' FINANCIAL TIMES
'A spectacular epic tapestry. Nobody could tell the story of our inextricable relationship with wild nature as beautifully as Sarah Hall.' LEE SCHOFIELD
'[Hall]sweeps from the cinematic to the specific, her prose pulsing with life and lyricism. Helmpushes both the boundaries of the novel and our relationship with nature.' SPECTATOR
'A big, celebratory book, in places delightfully playful, in others as tight and breathless as a thriller.' ANDREW MILLER
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This virtuosic outing from Hall (Burncoat) gives voice to the Helm—a storied northeasterly wind known for its destructive power and distinctive cloud formations that blows down the Cross Fell escarpment in Northwest England. Helm describes its "crazy coming-of-age" as it becomes aware of life on Earth, noting that "things become interesting" with the evolution of human beings. From there, the novel moves from the Neolithic to the present—with numerous stops in between. Chapters from Helm's perspective alternate with those narrated by a Victorian wind-hunter, Thomas Bodger; a prehistoric tribeswoman who names the wind Halron; a tortured Dark Ages crusader who carries a freshly hewn cross up the escarpment; and a contemporary climate scientist, Dr. Selima Sutar, whose "experiments have shown that cloud-borne plastics are leading to denser accumulation of cloud"—in other words, humans are changing Helm's very makeup with their behavior. To center a novel on a sentient wind and its relationship with humans is audacious, but Hall carries it off with conviction, fully inhabiting disparate voices across centuries. Most poignant are the chapters from the perspective of Janni, a mid-20th-century girl who undergoes electroconvulsive therapy, and whose tender, almost romantic bond with Helm is moving and well drawn. Readers will be swept away by Hall's ambitious and formally daring narrative.
