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Funny, warm and wise, Bleaker House is a book about trying, and failing, to write a novel.
Nell Stevens has a First in English and Creative Writing from Warwick, after which she went on to study Arabic and Comparative Literature at Harvard, and to receive a Marcia Trimble Fellowship and the Florence Engel Randall Graduate Fiction Award for her MFA in Fiction at Boston University. She is currently researching a Ph.D. in Victorian literature at King's College London. She was a finalist in the 2011 Elle magazine Writing Talent Contest, and a runner-up in both the 2014 Mslexia Memoir Competition and the 2015 Mslexia Short Story Prize.
Perfect
*Lena Dunham*
The perfect read for anyone who has ever considered themselves "a
writer"
*Sunday Times Style Magazine*
Bleaker House swirls text, subtext, and context into a single
narrative, a mesmerizing literary levitation act . . . lovely and
thoughtful
*Vogue*
It's not only her fellow writers who will be captivated by
Stevens's meditative, engagingly comic reflection on the three
months she spent working on a novel
*Harper's Bazaar*
One of the most original, entertaining, and thought-provoking books
I have ever read about the difficulty of writing a book
*New Yorker*
Hilarious and original, charming and engaging. I loved it
*Rebecca Wait, author of The View on the Way Down and The
Followers*
Nell Stevens takes you on a wild ramble across the landscape of the
writing life, and at the end sets you down somewhere entirely new
and unexpected. This is a romp of a book, a genre-defying feat of
the imagination, and pure pleasure to read.
*Alison Pick, Booker-longlisted author of Far to Go*
I read Bleaker House in a gulp. It's a charming read whose first
third has a laugh a page before Nell's odyssey turns into something
more serious. You can't, just by attending writing school, learn
how to produce fine writing. This clever and funny book shows you
may also want to get out and experience the world, and yourself, as
well.
*Dan Boothby, author of Island of Dreams*
Bleaker House is so riveting and so much fun to read, I would have
loved it even if it hadn't also been innovative and brilliant, but
it is all those things. Nell Stevens is an excellent writer and I
can't wait to read every book she writes.
*Kate Christensen, author of PEN/Faulkner-winning The Great
Man*
Entertaining . . . A thought-provoking reflection on writers and
writing
*Tatler*
I wolfed this wholly original part-memoir, part travelogue, part
short story collection in one sitting, and adored it. As well as
being funny, edgy, confiding, and ever so slightly horrifying, it's
also a fascinating reflection on writing: how it is taught, and how
it is learned. And you'll never look at a potato - or a Ferrero
Rocher chocolate - in quite the same way again
*Bookseller*
Fresh and spirited . . . A delightful literary debut
*Kirkus*
There's something alluringly Victorian about the whole book . . .
In our increasingly small and connected world, narratives that
tackle the peculiar senses of loneliness and remove, and the
effects they have on the self, are increasingly rare . . . Bleaker
House never devolves into a stunt book. Instead, Stevens charts a
path of personal and professional exploration tinged with both
sadness and humor
*Jezebel*
An inventive memoir about a young writer's struggle to find her
literary footing
*NPR*
A whimsical, good-humored, yearning-filled, thought-provoking
read
*Bustle*
Quirky and engaging . . . A captivating portrait of the creative
life
*BookPage*
This year's literary sensation . . . summer's must-read . . . an
often very entertaining book about failing to write a book . . .
what makes it most like something Dunham might have conceived is
the comic skill with which Stevens deftly builds up a portrait of
herself as the flawed but loveably self-deluding heroine of her own
pyrrhic publishing scheme. This is a picaresque, recognisably human
tale of a young woman’s failure to follow through on the glaringly
unrealistic goals she set herself.
*Evening Standard*
As Stevens wrestles with questions of how (and whether) to turn the
grist of life’s happenings into literary material, she paints an
honest portrait of writerly neurosis.
*San Francisco Chronicle*
An entertaining, perverse and singular book
*Observer*
Stevens writes with considerable charm and winning honesty
*Guardian*
Confiding, edgy and ever-so-slightly horrifying . . . I enjoyed it
so much I wolfed it in one sitting. Bleaker House is an enthralling
reflection on writing: how it is taught and how you learn to do it.
And you’ll never look at a potato or a Ferrero Rocher in quite the
same way again.
*Daily Express*
Quirky . . . fascinating . . . she may not have written the novel
of her dreams, but the book she has produced will resonate with
anyone who has shared her ambitions [to write].
*Daily Mail*
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