Edition:
Paperback
ISBN:
9780571217045
Published:
05.03.2009
No of pages:
544
Other Editions: Hardback
Pilcrow
Adam Mars-Jones
‘I’m not sure that I can claim to have taken my place in the human alphabet, even as its honorary twenty-seventh letter. I’m more like a specialised piece of punctuation, a cedilla, umlaut or pilcrow, hard to track down on the keyboard of a computer or typewriter. Pilcrow is the prettiest of the bunch, assessed purely as a word. And at least it stands on its own. It doesn’t perch or dangle. Pilcrow it is.’
That’s the reader’s introduction to John Cromer, one of the most unusual heroes in all literature. If the minority is always right, John must be practically infallible. He experiences his 1950s childhood as a sort of ramshackle isolation tank, screening out sensation and adventure. Of course, as he points out, time passed slowly for everyone in the fifties, it wasn’t just him, but it’s hard to deny him the status of a special case.
From that point on, John’s epic task becomes clear. He must climb out of the tank and make his way somehow on land. Pilcrow is an exploration of a rich but marginal life, an engrossing story with a vibrant supporting cast of ghouls, matrons and sexual adventurers.
Tags
Categorised as:
Fiction
Sub-categories:
General Fiction
Genres & Themes:
Disability;
Outsiders;
Bildungsroman
Characters:
John Cromer
Cedilla
Adam Mars-Jones
Cedilla continues the history of John Cromer (‘adventures’ sounds rather too hectic) begun by Pilcrow, described by the London Review of Books as ‘peculiar, original ...
Donkey Boy
Henry Williamson
The second volume of A Chronicle of Ancient Sunlight , Donkey Boy is the story of Richard Maddison's first-born Phillip, nicknamed 'donkey boy' because his ...
His Illegal Self
Peter Carey
‘When the boy was almost eight a woman stepped out of the elevator into the apartment on East 62nd Street and he recognized her straight ...
The Story of Forgetting
Stefan Merrill Block
At seventy, Abel Haggard is a hermit, resigned to memories of the family he has lost, living in isolation on his family’s farm amid ...
The Confessions of Max Tivoli
Andrew Sean Greer
We are each the love of someone's life ...
So begins The Confessions of Max Tivoli, a heartbreaking love story with a narrator like no ...
Newsletter Sign-up
Keep in touch with all the latest news and events from Faber Social by signing up for the newsletter. Sign up here.
Free UK P&P
On orders over £25.00 (see conditions)