"Here are female relationships in all their envy, jealousy, anger, ambition and fear . . . mitigated by wit and energy." Independent
None of us are perfect, in the way we love, age, or view the world. The Not-Dead and the Saved offers us an opportunity for reinvention: of ourselves, those we have lost, and the world in which we live. From a man doomed to spend his life trying to find solutions to cancer; to a new mother haunted by a swaddling, tablet-eating great-aunt; to an intrepid literary agent who travels to the Yorkshire Moors to discover the next big thing, and ends up eating Anne Bronte's rock cakes, we meet a host of characters who are desperately, creatively, and often hilariously trying to evade the underlying truths of their lives.
The Not-Dead and the Saved is a cascade, of warm, wise and insightful stories about human nature, frank, funny, and sometimes desolating, but always underpinned by tenderness, and by a faith in enduring bonds of love.
PRAISE FOR KATE CLANCHY
"A feat of voice and structure, breathtaking in its poignancy . . . Clanchy's tales possess a raw, unsettled urgency, as if she were gripping the reader by the collar. These are not, it should be noted, stories for the faint of heart. They are literary hand grenades, raising difficult questions about the world in which we live - which is exactly what we need right now." Guardian
"Stories of admirable scope and ambition . . . this new volume strikes a charming balance between focus on character and the controlled, potent use of language." Literary Review
Author Biography:
Kate Clanchy is the author of Meeting the English, shortlisted for the Costa Prize, and the much acclaimed memoir, Antigona and Me. Her poetry has brought her many literary awards and a wide audience. She was born and grew up in Scotland but now lives in Oxford.