Dark, magical and unsettling, Folk is a work of breathtaking imagination which explores the remote, unforgiving village of Neverness and it's singular inhabitants. For fans of Angela Carter, Sarah Perry and Daisy Johnson
Zoe Gilbert is the winner of the Costa Short Story Award 2014.
Her work has appeared in anthologies from Comma, Cinnamon, Labello,
and Pankhearst presses, and has been published in journals
including The Stinging Fly, Mechanics’ Institute Review, Bohemyth,
Holdfast, Lighthouse, and the British Fantasy Society Journal. In
2015 she appeared at the Beijing Bookworm Festival in China on
behalf of the British Council and was commissioned by Microsoft to
create a short story book. She is working on a PhD in Fiction and
Creative Writing at the University of Chichester, focusing on the
influence of folk tales on contemporary short stories. She chairs
the Short Story Critique Group at Waterstones Piccadilly and
co-hosts the Short Story Club at the Word Factory. She is also the
co-founder of London Lit Lab, providing creative writing courses
for Londoners.
@mindandlanguage
An extraordinary debut novel … It feels both ancient – drawing on
deep seams of myth and folklore – and strikingly contemporary,
pushing at the edges of what we mean when we call a book a novel.
In Folk, Zoe Gilbert has made a thing of strange and enduring
beauty
*Financial Times*
Folk is a special book: immersive and dripping with life, each
story a spell, an allegory, a dark, smoky poem divined from the
landscape of our ancient kingdom … It reads like a dream that, once
visited, is difficult to leave behind
*Guardian*
Genuinely original, disturbing, beautiful and gripping ... Folk can
be read as a map of the British mythic imagination: of the river
under the river. Starkly original and expertly written, it draws
you, like a faerie song, into a kingdom from which you may never
escape, and may not want to
*New Statesman*
Dazzling and unsettling, much like the best and darkest of fairy
tales
*Times Literary Supplement*
A dark, often discomforting debut … Gilbert’s sensuous prose
conjures fantastical figures including a man born with a wing for
an arm, and a girl who’s abducted by a water bull … Bewitching
*Mail on Sunday*
Folk is absolutely stunning. I loved it. With gorgeous, incantatory
prose, it submerges you in a mysterious and utterly compelling
world. Its illumination lingers long after you close the book
*Madeline Miller, Orange Prize-winning author of The Song of
Achilles*
I was thoroughly absorbed. Zoe Gilbert’s invented folk-world is
sensuous and dangerous and thick with magic
*Tessa Hadley, author of The Past*
That rare thing: genuinely unique. It’s part-myth, part-allegory,
wholly wonderful
*Observer*
A captivating mythical, magical and haunting debut which draws on
fascinating folklore
*i*
Wild, domestic, powered by elements both natural and weird, Folk
hauls us into a past where there’s room for magic and for mystery.
Give in and go there
*Margo Lanagan, author of Tender Morsels*
An utterly tantalising new voice. With Folk, Gilbert casts a
powerful spell, creating a world on the page that feels as old as
the hills and yet exquisitely alive ... To read Folk is to find
oneself rapt
*Alison MacLeod, author of All the Beloved Ghosts*
There are themes of desire and longing, loss and mourning, and the
rites of passage that must be undertaken to reach adulthood ...
Folk has a powerful sense of mythology, reminiscent of Angela
Carter
*Observer*
With gorgeous, incantatory prose, Folk submerges you in a
mysterious and utterly compelling world. It stayed with me long
after I turned the last page
*Cosmopolitan*
As delightful and as dark as the collected Brothers Grimm. The
village of Neverness is misted with secrets and sticky with magic.
But as mystical as their circumstances might be the villagers are
neither Cinderellas nor wicked-witches ... These tender portraits
are, perhaps, Zoe Gilbert’s greatest act of conjuring
*Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Harmless Like You*
Brilliant. It’s visceral and savage, but the savagery always comes
with a light touch ... The stories all have a beautiful fairytale
quality that makes them look like they were spun out of one of
Neverness’s half-magic mists. It’s a gorgeous, uneasy siren of a
book
*Natasha Pulley, bestselling author of The Watchmaker of Filigree
Street*
The tales in Folk by Zoe Gilbert could have been ripped straight
from the darkest pages of the Brothers Grimm. These intertwined
fairy-tale-inspired stories are heavy with symbolism, lyrical and
hypnotic
*Good Housekeeping*
A haunting portrait of a community steeped in folklore. Gilbert is
a fine storyteller, and this is skilful, potent writing
*K J Orr, author of Light Box*
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
