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One of Us is Lying Sally Cline

One of Us is Lying By Sally Cline

One of Us is Lying by Sally Cline


$10.00
Condition - Very Good
Only 2 left

Summary

One of Us is Lying is a book of nuanced largely linked stories and a radio play concerned with love, loss, longing and betrayal. The passionate prose uncovers suffering and darkness beneath polished surfaces and glittering conversations.

One of Us is Lying Summary

One of Us is Lying by Sally Cline

One of Us is Lying is a volume of nuanced and largely linked tales concerned with love, loss, longing and betrayal. Sally Cline sees darkness and suffering beneath polished surfaces and glittering conversations. Several of the stories appear domestic with an outward harmony but misery or even humiliation lurk quietly behind suburban facades. However the bold passionate writing reminds readers of historic violence and ancient fears as well as the small disturbances of contemporary life. In the linked stories Sally Cline examines intertwined and complex relationships between her characters over a number of years. A secondary character in one story may become the central character in another. The stand-alone fictions have different protagonists but as lives and tales weave in and out there are subtle echoes and symbols that seem to edge towards stories already linked. The settings roam from quiet Greek villages, through the University cities of Oxford and Cambridge, into the bustling present of Halifax in Nova Scotia, back into the past of Nazi Germany. The actions take place in or around Scottish mountains, old fashioned mental asylums, Cretan cafes, and slow moving trains. Conflict thrives in an exotic art gallery, a Harley Street abortion clinic, an old people's home and on several beaches. The characters are women and men, gay, straight, married, single, and every age from childhood to the 80s. We see children everywhere absorbed in family life. We see elderly clients shut away in isolated homes. Characters include railway passengers, celebrated lawyers and musicians, care home workers, librarians, artists, hospital staff, writers, private psychiatrists, amateur photographers, and professional journalists. Couples are examined and motherhood assessed. There is warmth and wit in the writing. Several of the stories generate a feeling of unease where there is desolation and dread but never dullness. All the stories show an intense focus on rhythm and three very short tales could be read as prose poetry.

One of Us is Lying Reviews

'One of Us is Lying is a charming collection of darkly funny and melancholy stories, mingling characters and themes, shifting the reader through tender layers of female experience.' A.L.Kennedy 'Poetic and painful, peopled by the lonely and the yearning, Sally Cline's stories in One of Us is Lying never take the smooth path, avoiding pat answers to pacify suffering. With the feel of a classic, Cline enchants with her beautifully-woven words, then breaks your heart in the way every great story should.' Tania Hershman 'Characters and relationships form and reform here like patterns in a kaleidoscope: Cline's troubled women spill their stories in incantations of rage, grief and longing.' Jane Rogers 'A beguiling collection of powerful stories. Be careful as you turn the page: it can be unexpectedly dark on the other side.' Romesh Gunesekera 'There is a shape shifting quality to this very singular collection of short stories (and radio play). Characters leak between the tales, sometimes obviously, sometimes more surreptitiously. Daisy, a strong and unusual character, recurs, but we soon recognise similar habits and mannerisms in other female characters. Within the stories too, consciousness and identities leak, merge and blur. Shared themes, emotional undercurrents, motifs and images link the stories and the cumulative effect of reading them in one gulp, as I did, is startling, bewildering, provoking, exciting, amusing and challenging. Cline has a playful and inventive relationship with language, and a sophisticated ripple of humour runs through this remarkable and original collection.' Lesley Glaister 'One of Us is Lying is a delectable set of short stories, each one quirky, unexpected and tender. Sally Cline reveals a deep affection for and understanding of the human condition, and has a touching ability to combine the momentous with the mundane; to understand how, in the midst of even deep tragedy, the nuts and bolts of daily life must go on.' Katharine McMahon 'Slyly funny and acute.' Salley Vickers

About Sally Cline

Sally Cline, Fellow of The Royal Society of Arts and Advisory Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund, is the author of 11 books including biographies of Radclyffe Hall (shortlisted for a LAMBDA award), the award winning Zelda Fitzgerald, and forthcoming January 2014 Dashiell Hammett: Man of Mystery (Arcade Books USA). She has now completed a biographical study of Lillian Hellman. She was one of the UK Judges for the 2013 H.W. Fisher Best First Biography Prize and is co-series editor of Bloomsbury's 9 volume series of books on writing, for which she has co-authored two volumes, one on life writing and one on literary non-fiction. Chapter 5 of her first novel The Visitor is on the web in issue 11 of The International Literary Quarterly for which she is a Consulting Editor. Her short fiction for print and radio has won prizes from the BBC and Raconteur and been shortlisted for the Asham Award. She has received a Hawthornden Fellowship, and won the Hosking Houses Trust Fellowship for Women Writers over 40. She lives in Cambridge, has taught at Cambridge University, was Writer in Residence at Anglia Ruskin University, has judged and mentored for the Arts Council Escalator programme and currently for the prestigious Gold Dust mentoring scheme. She has degrees and Masters from Durham and Lancaster Universities and an Honorary Doctorate in writing internationally.

Additional information

GOR005693598
9780957307933
0957307934
One of Us is Lying by Sally Cline
Used - Very Good
Paperback
Golden Books
20131126
226
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

Customer Reviews - One of Us is Lying