{"title":"Books by Gerard Woodward","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9780099286936","title":"I'll Go To Bed At Noon","description":"\u003cp\u003eIt is 1970 in the suburbs of north London and, from the untidy comfort of her crowded house, Colette Jones is watching her older brother go to pieces, drinking himself into oblivion on home-made wine. Colette knows the solace a drink can provide, being partial to an evening at the Red Lion herself. But soon she finds she cannot afford to ignore the destructive effect that alcohol is having on her family, and with gritted teeth Colette is forced to exile the alcoholic son she loves so much from the house. But this act takes its toll and, just as she can't resist a drink, so she can't resist allowing Janus back into her life - with heartbreaking consequences for everyone.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eGerard Woodward's magnificent second novel continues the story of the Joneses, so memorably introduced in \u003ci\u003eAugust\u003c\/i\u003e. By way of an odyssey through the pubs, parks and shopping parades of suburban London, it lurches from farce to tragedy as the members of one unforgettable family build and destroy their lives.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56222837703029,"sku":"9780099286936","price":16.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780099286936_cc3ab4dd-1ddb-42a3-8766-89d2e7b6c597.jpg?v=1786011420"},{"product_id":"9781447288695","title":"Legoland","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA stunning new collection of stories from the Man Booker Prize and Whitbread Prize shortlisted author.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMany of \u003ci\u003eLegoland\u003c\/i\u003e's stories begin with the seemingly every day, only for a turn of events to land them in an unsettling place where life's normal rules no longer apply. Whether he's writing about a child’s birthday party or the invasion of an unnamed country each story is full of Woodward's blacker-than-black humour, fearless surrealism, and poetic phrasing. Included here is his brilliant story 'The Family Whistle', shortlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eLegoland \u003c\/i\u003ecelebrates Woodward's trademark gift for wit and surprise: his lithe prose carrying us from comedy to tragedy and back again within a single tale. It confirms him as one of the most gifted and original writers of our time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘Gerard Woodward falls squarely between the comic lunacy of American short-form virtuoso George Saunders and the everyday rhapsodies of Raymond Carver’ \u003ci\u003eTime Out\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56300103762293,"sku":"9781447288695","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781447288695_b78cf9cb-c656-40c3-8faf-de1450a3c8b2.jpg?v=1786020800"},{"product_id":"9781529027709","title":"The Vulture","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe vulture, the presiding genius of Gerard Woodward’s collection, is at once sympathetic and awful, intimate and other.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWoodward naturally positions himself at uncomfortable borders and thresholds, and in doing so alerts us to the flimsiness of the conceits of home, of family and human culture.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMany poets have challenged our lazy habit of addressing nature though the pathetic fallacy; few have had the nerve to consciously embrace it as a subversive strategy, through which we can explore the strange intimacies we share with other life-forms. \u003ci\u003eThe Vulture\u003c\/i\u003e shows insects and animals and plants invade, infect and fuse with us at every turn; elsewhere, the architecture of our lives, our houses, gardens, careers and bodies, are revealed as the provisional drafts they are. No contemporary poet unsettles like Woodward: he does so through no easy surrealism, but instead an extraordinary ability to render our home the alien planet it is, and give conscious voice and vivid shape to the terrible sense of precariousness that lies just below our waking state.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56303177007477,"sku":"9781529027709","price":10.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781529027709_707d7747-81e7-48d6-a3ad-1023474aaf05.jpg?v=1786022330"},{"product_id":"9781905583188","title":"The New Uncanny","description":"\u003cbr\u003eBinding: Paperback \/ softback","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56308339573109,"sku":"9781905583188","price":11.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9781905583188_ee58fddd-7544-4507-ac9c-a91ee96799be.jpg?v=1786029192"},{"product_id":"august","title":"August","description":"Ever since Aldous Jones careened over the handlebars of his bicycle in 1955 and landed next to Farmer Evans's first field, it has become a tradition for him to take his family camping in Wales. Aldous has started to feel that a certain symbiosis has developed between their North London home and the Welsh village that they only ever see in August. As the years pass, Aldous's family idyll starts to disintegrate and the farm becomes a place drenched in memory.","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57466566214005,"sku":"9780099286929","price":15.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780099286929.jpg?v=1785654624"},{"product_id":"a-curious-earth","title":"A Curious Earth","description":"\u003cp\u003eBy the author of Booker-shortlisted \u003ci\u003eI'll Go To Bed At Noon.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAldous Jones is in a bad way: his dilapidated house is empty of family but full of hoarded odds and ends that remind him of his dead wife and son. A preference for whisky over washing rapidly leads to his hospitalisation but it also reawakens his desire for sex and adventure and his lifelong passion for art. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat follows is a heartbreakingly funny quest that will lead him first to the National Gallery, where he is bewitched by a Rembrandt painting, and then to Ostend, to stay with his boemian son and a ridiculous Dutch sexologist and then through a series of somewhat misguided relationships with sympathetic women to an ending of devatating poignancy...\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57466702168437,"sku":"9780099490654","price":15.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9780099490654.jpg?v=1785654761"}],"url":"https:\/\/backstory.london\/collections\/author-gerard-woodward.oembed","provider":"Backstory","version":"1.0","type":"link"}