Author:Sean Borodale
Human Work was written while cooking. It is the narrative of a voice in domesticity, at the alchemical heart of home – the hearth, or Hestia – where the kitchen is a stage for acts of eating and uttering; for the ebb and flow to the human mouth. The poems were written ‘live’ among pots and pans, beside chopping boards, between plates, bowls, knives, forks, spoons, and servings. Their time is the hybrid time of writing and cooking – where the dimensions of two activities hinge together. The poems occupy a shared space; the work is one work. They live together and cross-talk, like figures in a room, invoking an old story, perhaps one of our very first: how we make food to eat and share, how we draw and transform others’ bodies into being our own flesh and life. Implicit in ingredients are the stories of matter itself: without food there can be no other stories.
Like the poems of Bee Journal these poems started life in notebooks, in situ. Their pages seem marked with the very process of their making: jam, grease, wine stains, crumbs of flour and spice, flecks of meat, fish, fruit, vegetable. Like Bee Journal, this is a book about communal purpose, a record of risk and response – a poetry of the moment, both immemorial and thrillingly modern.
If you love cooking, and words…this book, given half a chance, will soon be engraved on your heart.
—— Rachel Cooke , ObserverThis is a stunning collection of poems about the rites, rituals and adventures of cooking. Just like the best dishes, everything combines wonderfully to produce subtle tastes and thoughts which linger in the mind after the book has been closed. A delicious treat.
—— Bath ChronicleWonderful, original and sustaining poems.
—— Kate Kellaway , ObserverHe is a marvellous poet, a man who knows his artichokes.
—— Kate Kellaway , ObserverAdam Foulds is a young British novelist of striking talent and eclecticism. His style is first-rate, combining precision with a rich poetic imagination. He is able to do more with language, and at greater depth, than most other British novelists of his generation.
—— Andrew Holgate , Sunday TimesThe pellucid elegance of Foulds’s fictional voice is entirely his own. He conjures with exhilarating assurance the sense of a postwar collapse of order so complete as to be almost voluptuous.
—— Jane Shilling , ProspectAmbitious and diffuse... Foulds is a master of concision and clarity, and his prose is "poetic" in the best sense: never florid or rambling, each short sentence weighed and parcelled out.
—— Tom Gatti , New StatesmanThe bleakness of Foulds’s message…is not reflected in the richness of the prose or characterisation of this deep, dark, demanding tale.
—— Lesley McDowell , Independent on Sunday[Foulds] matches his flair for rhythm with a skilful ownership of both his prose and a complex narrative. All delivered with a minimalist restraint.
—— Will Dean , IndependentThere's much to admire in this novel. Foulds has a searching eye for detail and an apparently helpless compulsion to wring imagery from his subject.
—— Tim Martin , Daily TelegraphFoulds’s writing invites...returning to consider each layer of the composition...there is a prismatic quality to the language which allows various levels of interpretation to be separated out and refined.
—— Thea Lenarduzzi , Times Literary SupplementWonderfully enticing.
—— Lucian Robinson , Literary ReviewIndividual scenes are often gripping, shocking or moving.
—— John Harding , Daily MailThe bloody horrors of conflict are captured with visceral aplomb in this fine, minimalist novel.
—— iSome of the most vividly evoked battle scenes I've read – he doesn't shy away from taking risks … chilling and touching all at the same time.
—— John Preston , Evening StandardFoulds has the literary intelligence to turn the commonplace on its head.
—— Alberto Manguel , GuardianA high-class thriller … Foulds has a literary novelist's feel for [Sicily's] harsh beauty.
—— Mail on SundayFoulds’ prose is superb… It reads like Catch-22 written by Evelyn Waugh.
—— Good Book GuideIt’s an ambitious book and the writer relates his story with poetic precision
—— i (The paper for today)Told in a language that is both lyrical and stark The Tusk that Did the Damage should win Tania James praise and laurels from those readers who long for a more penetrating look at environmental issues and the moral questions which accompany them’.
—— Joe Phelan , Bookmunch
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