Synopses & Reviews
In her tender portrait of a woman returning to the English village where she grew up to bury her mother and sell their dilapidated house, Lucy Wood conjures a ghost, three generations of women, and a mesmerizing story of love, solace, and home.
Pearl doesnt know how shes ended up in the riverthe same cacophonous river in the same rain-soaked valley shed been stuck in for years. Ada, Pearls daughter, doesnt know how shes ended up back in the house she fledwith no heating apart from a fire she cant light and no way of getting around apart from an old car shes scared to drive. But Pepper, Adas six-year old daughter, who is used to following her restless mother from place to place, is drawn to the house and fascinated by the scattering of people she meets, by the river that unfurls through the valley, and by the strange old woman who sits on the bank with her feet in the icy water; she doesnt know why anyone would ever want to leave.
Atmospheric and elegiac, Weathering is a lushly imagined first novel about family, homecoming, and the shimmering line between this world and the next.
Review
PRAISE FOR
WEATHERINGLucy Wood is a sorceress.” Karen Russell
A strange and wonderful book with the keen, even ecstatic love and appreciation for nature as Hardy or Powys. The primary characters are a ferocious, glorious, and most inhospitable river and a wildly dilapidated house. An absolutely irresistible tale of ghosts, grace, and perseverance. Wood is a wizard.” Joy Williams, author of State of Grace and The Quick and the Dead
PRAISE FOR DIVING BELLES
Longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize 2013
Shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize 2013
Runner up in the BBC National Short Story Award 2013
Awarded the Somerset Maugham Award 2013
Wood's finely wrought collection has touches of a benign Angela Carter and recalls the playful yet political transmogrifications of Atwood and Byatt.” The Guardian (London)
Enchanting short stories.” The Guardian, Books of the Year (London)
This combination of subtle humor and everyday magic makes "Diving Belles" an engaging collection of contemporary folklore.” The Minneapolis Star Tribune
One of the best aspects of these stories is the way in which the daily lives of their characters become imbued with a mystical, folkloric significance ... although many readers will enjoy the evocations of Cornish myth and the looming presence of the landscape, Wood's major talent is as an observer of the everyday.” Times Literary Supplement (London)
How easily Lucy Wood in Diving Belles makes magic.” The Rumpus
Magical and bewitching.” Vogue (London)
"Wood captures something fresh, fantastical and eloquent...These stories express a distinctive voice and a gently beguiling imagination." Kirkus
"Whimsical...Lovers of fairy tales and Celtic lore will take pleasure in immersing themselves in the rich, magical world Woods tales inhabit." Booklist
"Aching and mystical...These are distinctively grown-up fairy tales that re-create a sense of wonder and imagination without the moral endings of their childhood counterparts, but, like them, linger in the imagination." Publishers Weekly
Cornish folklore for the modern day done in a beautiful, spooky way.” Harper's Bazaar (London)
Wood's imagination is extraordinary; she has an instinct for the inner meanings of myths that echoes the great Angela Carter. Superb.” The Times (London)
Just when you think the world must be running out of good titles for books, along comes the lovely and intriguing Diving Belles - and the book doesn't disappoint, either. Lucy Wood's twelve short stories bring an offbeat magic-realist touch to modern Cornwall ... Throughout the collection, Wood pulls off a careful balancing act between fantasy and reality, folkloric past and prosaic present.” Sunday Times (London)
This bewitching short story collection draws its power from a deft blend of Cornish folklore and everyday contemporary cares ... magic encroaches upon their narratives as slowly but surely as the incoming tide, so that even the most outlandish goings-on come to seem natural.” Daily Mail (London)
Steeped in enchantments and shimmering with an infusion of the area's folklore and landscape ... excellent.” Independent on Sunday (London)
Each year, book blurbs tell you that a thousand new writers have fresh, distinctive voices. But fresh, distinctive voices are actually very rare. Lucy Wood has one.” Michel Faber, author of The Crimson Petal and the White
Lucy Wood has an intensity and clarity of expression, deeply rooted in a sense of place. Her stories have a purity and strength, and an underlying human warmth; they resonate in the mind.” Philip Hensher, author of The Northern Clemency
Diving Belles is a lovely, absorbing collection of tales, animated by Lucy Wood's remarkable gift for evoking Cornwall as both a physical and mythic place. She is writing out of a rich tradition yet making it utterly her own.” Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, author of Ms. Hempel Chronicles and Madeleine Is Sleeping
These are stories from the places where magic and reality meet. It is as if the Cornish moors and coasts have whispered secrets into Lucy Wood's ears and, in response, she has fashioned exquisite tales of mystery and humanity. In her prose, the fabulous moves across the everyday like the surf moving over the shore, shifting it in subtle measures, leaving it altered in its wake.” Ali Shaw, author of The Girl with Glass Feet
About the Author
Lucy Wood is the author of a critically acclaimed collection of short stories based on Cornish folklore
Diving Belles. She has been long-listed for the Dylan Thomas Prize, shortlisted for the Edge Hill Prize and was a runner-up in the BBC National Short Story Award. She has also been awarded the Holyer an Gof Award and a Somerset Maugham Award. Wood has a masters degree in creative writing from Exeter University. She grew up in Cornwall and lives in Devon in the United Kingdom.