Hello!

Look out!

We’ve just started taking pre-orders for Mark Bowles’ new novel. We’re going to be publishing it in July - so that’s another very good reason to look forward to the summer.

How Do People Stay The Same is the follow-up to Mark’s first novel All My Precious Madness, which (yes it did!) won the inaugural Speakies Best Fiction Award, and was shortlisted for The Goldsmiths Prize, The James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and The Author's Club Best First Novel Award. It also got reviews like these:

Unapologetically erudite and frequently brutal... a devastating satire on the way class, education and masculinity act as a kind of trap. —The Telegraph

A striking debut [that] explores working-class identity, masculinity and alienation… a poignant meditation on a son's love for his father. —The Observer

Funny and biting... vivid and spare... The energy of the sentences pull you along and make reading All My Precious Madness is a pleasure, even when Henry is at his most maddening. —The Times

It was, in other words, a very fine novel - and so is this new one.

How Do People Stay The Same contains the exquisite prose and lacerating wit that readers loved so much in All My Precious Madness - but this book also reveals even more layers to Mark’s talent. It’s a delicate, deeply tender book – an exploration of family, childhood, love, and the personal bonds that tie us together.

It’s told as a series of journal entries that move backwards in time, following the life of Patrick Boyd – from the present-day contentment of family life and backwards through darker, lonelier, sadder stretches of time.

It lays all of Patrick’s experience before us, with the challenges of work, housing and all the other pinpricks of existence jostling with his complex inner world. It reveals a fragile man ground down by the world around him – but who might just be able to change and might just have the hope of a brighter future.

Might…

Anyway, it’s wonderful. Elly and I love this book and we’re very proud to be able to present it to you - and to the world. You can get your copy here.

Telenovela - still great!

I hope you’ve been enjoying Telenovela - and maybe even taken some hope from its story about the final days of a mad, rightwing dictator.

I’m happy to say that it’s continued to get superb reviews since publication.

For instance, in The Irish Times Colm McKenna agrees with me that Gonzalo gives us lessons for the future as well as from the past:

Telenovela’s context gives cause for optimism. Set just before Pinochet’s 17-year rule was put to an end by a presidential referendum, Garcia’s leads are so acclimatised to Pinochet’s rule that the possibility of its end proves as fanciful as the daydreaming that fills these pages. Concluding on the cusp of a breakthrough, Telenovela is a convincing portrait of the darkest period in Chile’s modern history, which, by homing in on those on the wrong side of history, reflects the subtle weaponry of silence and language.

We still have a few special signed limited edition subscriber copies, as well as signed regular subscriber copies - and you can snap one up by subscribing right now!

Heavy literature

The New York Times have recently run a charming feature about long books to while away the long winter nights, and have recommended all-time classic Ducks, Newburyport by all-time genius Lucy Ellmann (alongside a few other books that might also stand the test of time, like Middlemarch).

The New York Times says:

There’s stream-of-consciousness fiction, and then there’s “Ducks, Newburyport” — a marathon of inner monologue composed as (nearly) one 1,000-page sentence. The book’s mile-a-minute thoughts, recollections and daydreams belong to a middle-aged homemaker in small-town Ohio; she prefaces each one with the oddly hypnotic phrase “the fact that.” For most of its pages, Ellmann’s novel is almost defiantly plotless; it culminates, however, in a startling act of terror that transforms all that mundanity into something sharp and devastating.

We have copies in our online shop if you want to see if you agree…

… Meanwhile, on the subject of book length, I don’t like to contradict the New York Times, but some of the novels on that list are not really all that long. I also feel that it’s important to remember that when the first proof copies of Ducks, Newburyport arrived, we conducted extensive scientific research to prove that it is in fact weightier than all other contenders:

In your face, Samuel Johnson!

I feel very lucky to be around all these wonderful books - and very glad to be able to share them with you.

I’ll be back with more news before too long.

In the meantime, Elly and me and our splendid judges are currently reading the entries for our short story competition. We’ll be sharing the longlist soon. It’s going to be a good one.

More on that in a few weeks. We’ve also been discussing the next set of books for our Critical Reading class and I’ll get those up soon too. Can’t wait.

Until then, hope you’re staying safe out there - and dealing with the awfulness as best you can. La lutte continue!

In hope and solidarity - and also fondly,

Sam

PS In case you missed it, here’s another special thing about Telenovela:

We're very proud to be the first publisher to have the Books By People stamp - and it feels very fitting that it should be on Telenovela; a book about the fight against authoritarianism and all the associated nonsense.

PPS Limited edition art prints

Another plug for James Nunn’s wonderful art - which will make wonderful gifts for fans of Alex Pheby’s landmark fantasy trilogy. LOOK! YUMMY!

James Nunn, the artist who designed the covers for Alex Pheby’s genre defining and reshaping Cities Of The Weft fantasy series is making a collection of printed signed and numbered prints of his artwork available.

He’s producing special art prints of the covers of each book, as well as individual illustrations of characters like these:

Here are the details from James:

You can buy them by visiting this website:

https://jamesnunnart.com/collections/prints

• Edition size: 50 only

• Release: 25 now, 25 later

• Signed, numbered & dated by the artist

• Covers: £250

• Characters: £150

• 20% off for Galley Beggar friends using the code: GALLEYBEGGAR

Don’t forget that discount code! In fact, I have a special interest in your doing so, Not only do I want you to get a bargain, but also James has generously said that he will give a percentage of every sale that uses it to our little press.

in other words, buying one of these lovely items will help fund our future runs of books - and hopefully they’ll be good investments for you too. Mordew, Malarkoi and Waterblack are all landmarks in fantasy literature, after all.

PPPS Substack again

Thank you to everyone who has also read my Substack. It’s still going well. Really well! Whoopee!

It’s already started making a bit of money for Galley Beggar - a blessing, after six years of increasing prodution costs - but I’m also very keen to keep most of it free and accessible so that all our newsletter readers should be able to enjoy it too. You can find my ‘stack’ here.

I’ve written about the fight against AI in publishing at some length. (I’ve done it more than once, in fact!)

Recently, I’ve complained about Hamnet. That felt cathartic.

PPPPS Another reminder of the podcast I appear on with the wonderful Lori Feathers. We’ve had some amazing guests recently and fascinating conversations. The most recent episode features a fascinating conversation with Chilean author Simón López Trujillo about his mind-bending novel Pedro The Vast.

PPPPS The Good Solder

The usual reminder that we’ve produced an ebook edition of The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford.

If you haven’t read it, now is your chance. Ford’s novel is superb; a shocking and constantly surprising tale of marital strife, sexual intrigue, deep deception, fathomless mystery and tragic death. It’s wrong-footing, deceptive, brilliantly plotted … and a masterpiece. One of the finest novels of the twentieth century.

PPPPPS You can find us on Bluesky if you’re keen for more book talk and more pictures of our dog, Sirius.

PPPPPPPS Thanks for reading all the way down here. If you haven’t yet heard the Charli XCX Wuthering Heights song, House, go to it!