Welcome to Litsy!

The story of Edith, an artist who creates unique public works of art by preserving trees. Her childhood is fractured by her mother's brain injury + father's subsequent desertion, + by an abusive relationship. A pandemic leads to a lockdown which she shares with her new Turkish lover. Intimate, sensitive ,+ heart breaking the writing immerses you in life and loss.
#booked2023 #about pandemic @Cinfhen @alisiakae @Barbara

I‘ve been struggling to find the concentration to read lately. Today I‘m enjoying this book in the sunshine though.

This is a strange one, I wasn't sure I was understanding what was happening really. It has an pandemic but a much more dangerous one than Covid. It's about the life of Edith Harkness a sculptor, it goes back and forth in time. We learn about her childhood, parents and then present day. I decided to put it has pick as I reread passages to help me get it. It not a cheery book.

And here's my #bookspin list for May. I'm just getting started on the tagged book which was my #doublespin choice for April that I didn't get to yet.

I've tried to read this book three times, and I just can't get into it.

Learning to love completely, learning to let go: this quicksilver novel slips between feverish intensity and an outsider‘s detachment. Edith is an artist in northern England whose drive to create is how she finds meaning to existence… until a global pandemic strikes. Burntcoat is a truly remarkable story about accepting the gift of our mortality.

We are figures drawn briefly in space; given temporary form in exchange for consciousness, sense, a chance. We are ready-mades, disposables. How do we live every last moment as this—savant dust?

‘It‘s probably here,‘ you said at the start of that year, and you were right. It had been mistaken in the hospitals as something virulent and seasonal. One. Then dozens, fifty, a hundred. This is how the count starts—gradually, exponentially, numbers that insist on belief, and eventually confound it.

The body is a wound, a bell ringing in emergency—life, life, life.

Great writing—very cool cover too—elevate this pandemic era story into a compelling look at art, connection, & life in the midst of upheaval. As a virus spreads across Britain, Edith & her lover Halit retreat to her art studio/apartment where we see their lives in the present as well as Edith‘s past. Hall handles her characters‘ thoughts, emotions, experiences while living in a pandemic deftly & manages the weight/intensity well. A good read.

Sunday reading…

It took me a while to get used to the switching of timelines as the MC narrates her memories of her childhood, her mother, her love affair, & the aftermath of a pandemic. I got confused with the pronoun ‘you‘ used throughout the book. The writing portrays powerful images..the graphic sex scenes and descriptions of the illness can be quite unpleasant. A nicely observed and frightening novel about art, love, sex, and death, but I wasn‘t enamoured.

Going back and forth in time, Burntcoat follows Edith when her mother was alive and currently during a frightening pandemic (not this one) as she clings to Halit, a new boyfriend. There were parts of this that were mesmerizing, but the structure made it a little hard to follow and a bit disjointed. And for those who remain fearful in our current era, I would not suggest this one. I do like Hall and will look for her again.

Brilliant book although very frightening. So many beautiful sentences - what a skilled writer Sarah Hall is. A wonderful final read of the year! Happy New reading Year to all!

My last book of 2021! Another Christmas present. Never read Sarah Hall before and looking forward to it.

Like a fiend from legend it seemed to smoke through windows and keyholes, able, when its name was spoken, to materialise. It was in the drops of fluid, under friable skin, on the breath. It was in the water, on the counter, the letter, the gift of each kiss.

So many became reckless once they knew they hadn't beaten it... Others became reclusive, obsessed with every cough, every headache, nerve-damaged, mind damaged. Some are still enlisted in trials. I don't share their disbelief. I've been asked about this too. How is it possible to live with fear and hope?

Stunning! To be able to write this beautifully! It‘s a story of family, art, love an an unnamed pandemic. Sarah Hall deserves all the accolades she receives.

What can I even say about this beautiful novel? My heart hitched a number of times, as Edith‘s grief was palpable. Burntcoat reads like a melancholic love letter to a recipient who will never see it. We, as readers, have the privilege of indulging in the narrator‘s insightful and sorrowful observations. It hurts, but its power and poignancy were welcome here.

My full review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4271190654

“There are friends in life who save us, then disappear from sight. They remain indelible in the heart.”

“There‘s blindness to new lovers. They exist in a rare atmosphere of their own colony, trusting by sense and feel, creatures consuming each other, building shelters with their hopes. Other worlds cease. I know I felt something as it began, an understanding, foreboding, ordinance, even. Love is never the oldest story. It grows rich in the darkness.”

Lancaster litfest. Couldn't resist a Sarah Hall event.
https://litfest.org/