{"title":"Gerard Woodward","description":"\u003cp\u003eDelve into the poignant and beautifully observed worlds created by Gerard Woodward. From family sagas to historical fiction, discover his insightful novels, perfect for readers who appreciate nuanced storytelling and evocative prose.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"paper-lovers-book-gerard-woodward-9781509848010","title":"The Paper Lovers","description":"A devastating novel of love and obsession from the Man Booker Prize and Whitbread Prize shortlisted author.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49503727550737,"sku":"GOR009879954","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52602065846545,"sku":"GOR014558483","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52751201894673,"sku":"NIN9781509848010","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1509848010.jpg?v=1751427641"},{"product_id":"nourishment-book-gerard-woodward-9780330518635","title":"Nourishment","description":"‘Woodward’s study of the ways in which we consume ourselves and those we love is surprising – and surprisingly charming – darkly witty and altogether brilliant’ Easy Living    The English are an unusual bunch: quirky and eccentric, often reserved and reticent, but always strong and resilient. Tory Pace, the heroine of this beautifully written and hilarious black comedy, is all of these things. Typically, she’s trying to make the best of life in a difficult time: struggling, as only a mother can, to sustain her family in a land starved of nourishment. But like so many triumphs over adversity, her survival comes with a heavy price.   Beginning shortly after the outbreak of war and continuing into the deftly drawn austerity years that followed, Woodward offers a generous family saga. Equally memorable for poignant moments of sadness, comic tableau, witty observations and unforgettable characters, Nourishment is a novel like no other – every bit as unique and charming as an English family, in fact.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49504363512081,"sku":"GOR003001930","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52732098969873,"sku":"GOR014603935","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53555916767505,"sku":"GOR003349691","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0330518631.jpg?v=1751325262"},{"product_id":"i-ll-go-to-bed-at-noon-book-gerard-woodward-9780701171186","title":"I'll Go To Bed At Noon","description":"Colette Jones has had drink problems in the past, but now it seems as though her whole family is in danger of turning to alcohol. Her oldest son has thrown away a promising musical career for a job behind the counter in a builders' merchants, and his drinking sprees with his brother-in-law Bill, a pseudo-Marxist supermarket butcher who seems to see alcohol as central to the proletarian revolution, have started to land him in trouble with the police. Meanwhile Colette's recently widowered older brother is following an equally self-destructive path, having knocked back an entire cellar of homemade wine, he's now on the gin, a bottle a day and counting. Who will be next? Her youngest son had decided to run away to sea, but when her own husband hits the bottle Colette realises she has to act. As the pressure builds on Colette to cope with these damaged people, her own weaknesses begin to emerge, and become crucial to the outcome of all their lives. By way of an odyssey through the pubs, parks and drying-out clinics of suburban North London, Gerard Woodward's richly woven second novel I'll Go To Bed At Noon charts in microscopic detail the continuing history of a troubled but unforgettable family (first encountered in August) as it lurches from farce to tragedy and back again, and from one end of the 1970's to the other, and at the same time presents an unflinching portrait of British society in the unstable years leading up to the Thatcher revolution.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49505914945809,"sku":"GOR000512307","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50148667130129,"sku":"CIN0701171189G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51860140982545,"sku":"GOR004088736","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51894367551761,"sku":"GOR011354551","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52394302996753,"sku":"GOR013440036","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0701171189.jpg?v=1751453987"},{"product_id":"august-book-gerard-woodward-9780099286929","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. 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The authorities suspect his paintings contain coded information about the new military airfield that is to be built there. Brill protests that he is merely recording a landscape that will soon disappear. Under interrogation a more complicated picture emerges as Brill tells the story of his life - of growing up among the market gardens of The Heath, of his life on the London art scene of the 1930s, and his brief spell as a master at a minor public school. But a darker picture also comes to light, of dealings with the prostitutes and pimps of the Soho underworld, of a break-in at a royal residence and of connections with well-known fascist sympathisers at home and abroad.  So who is the real Kenneth Brill? The hero of El Alamein who, as a camouflage officer, helped pull off one of the greatest acts of military deception in the history of warfare, or the lover of Italian futurist painter and fascist sympathiser Arturo Somarco? Why was he expelled from the Slade? And what was he doing at Hillmead, the rural community run by Rufus Quayle, friend of Hitler himself? 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Whether he's writing about domestic subjects - such as in 'The Unloved', when a woman in a dysfunctional marriage finally leaves home after decades of misery; or tackling large issues on a global stage - the tyranny of dictators in 'The Fall of Mr and Mrs Nicholson'; or the invasion of an unnamed country in 'The Flag', each story is full of Woodward's blacker-than-black humour, fearless surrealism, and gift for phrase-making.  The collection also includes Woodward's brilliant story 'The Family Whistle', shortlisted for the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, in which a woman's husband returns home from war, only to discover his wife thinks he's been back for years because another man has already claimed his place. Legoland celebrates Woodward's gift for clarity, wit and surprise: his lithe prose and willingness to ignore convention carrying us from comedy to tragedy and back again, sometimes in a single story; it confirms him as one of the most gifted and original writers of our time.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49555201818897,"sku":"GOR007414666","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49561340051729,"sku":"GOR010986818","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49658565918993,"sku":"GOR011452809","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50875004616977,"sku":"GOR009194182","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/144728867X.jpg?v=1765014847"},{"product_id":"august-book-gerard-woodward-9780701171117","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. At Easter, Mrs Evans writes to ask if he, Colette and their four children require the third field for the summer; in August, their Bukta tent is brought down from the attic and unrolled in the garden of 89 Fernlight Avenue. 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. When the Evanses acquire a milking parlour, Aldous associates it with the acquisition of the Jones's first car - but Colette is right in seeing 'the culling of the dairymaids' as a premonition of far more radical change. As the years pass, Aldous's family idyll starts to disintegrate and the farm becomes a place drenched in memory. Gerard Woodward has written a stunning and unforgettable first novel. His beautiful prose skilfully turns the mesmerising story of one family's happiness and grief into an elegy for the charms of post-war English family life and for the child's-eye view that failed to see darkness lurking behind the jollity. From the wayward genius of an eldest son, Janus, to the exuberant, witty but ultimately unstable Colette - all the characters in this book will haunt the reader long after they have put it down.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49556526498065,"sku":"GOR002182753","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51828470087953,"sku":"GOR002184678","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0701171111.jpg?v=1750912726"},{"product_id":"curious-earth-book-gerard-woodward-9780099490654","title":"A Curious Earth","description":"By the author of Booker-shortlisted I'll Go To Bed At Noon.  Aldous 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.   What 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...","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49562007208209,"sku":"GOR001378031","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52723318587665,"sku":"GOR001648177","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/009949065X.jpg?v=1750876494"},{"product_id":"vanishing-book-gerard-woodward-9780330518659","title":"Vanishing","description":"There is no such thing as an ordinary life. But Kenneth Brill's is more extraordinary than most. 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Woodward's characters are wonderfully complex and rich.\"—London Telegraph","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49588462354705,"sku":"GOR006030970","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49663503171857,"sku":"GOR004158483","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50296385929489,"sku":"GOR013916961","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50313539879185,"sku":"CIN0393328007VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50349135003921,"sku":"CIN0393328007A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52679890272529,"sku":"NLS9780393328004","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53034942005521,"sku":"NIN9780393328004","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53392055206161,"sku":"CIN0393328007G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0393328007.jpg?v=1751447002"},{"product_id":"vulture-book-gerard-woodward-9781529027709","title":"The Vulture","description":"The vulture, the presiding genius of Gerard Woodward’s collection, is at once sympathetic and awful, intimate and other. 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In poems full of rooms and houses, where wily nature eludes the instinct to tame, Woodward combines the observing eye of an anthropologist with an exuberant, daring and endlessly playful imagination. There are houses of memory and houses of the future, houses that stand empty and houses crammed with the accumulations of life. From the clothes that house our bodies to the atmosphere that clothes our universe, from the flush of a toilet to the colonisation of Mars, Woodward is always looking at juxtapositions of the unruly and the controlled. Perhaps it is no accident that several of the poems are about coastal places or climate change. The ceaseless erosion of nature is an image of the impossibility of capture, with language the last barrier against decay and disappearance. In 'Norfolk', the pebbles on the beach, the pennies in a slot machine and his young son's wobbly tooth concatenate with enormous pathos as we watch the boy's realisation that life's events do not match his desire. The intimacy and emotion of this and other poems is a new development in Woodward's poetry and makes We Were Pedestrians his finest collection yet.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49608334442769,"sku":"GOR010759080","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49999950971153,"sku":"GOR004950511","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0701178876.jpg?v=1750847824"},{"product_id":"paper-lovers-book-gerard-woodward-9781509847983","title":"The Paper Lovers","description":"'Hugely enjoyable' John Boyne, author of The Heart's Invisible Furies   Arnold Proctor’s quiet life is thrown off balance when he falls obsessively in love with Vera, a religious woman and one of his wife’s friends. Vera seems untroubled by her wrongdoing, yet faithless Arnold is wracked with guilt. 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It is about love and betrayal, and what becomes of us after our greatest certainties have been shattered.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49608684470545,"sku":"GOR009127657","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49652881293585,"sku":"GOR009533429","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ WELL_READ \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53056160956689,"sku":"GOR012492473","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1509847987.jpg?v=1751149002"},{"product_id":"after-the-deafening-book-gerard-woodward-9780701162719","title":"After the Deafening","description":"With the publication of his first book, HOUSEHOLDER, Gerard Woodward emerged as one of the most talented and unusual new poets of the 1990s. In his forthcoming collection AFTER THE DEAFENING, Woodward's powerful imagination, and the details of everyday life take on an extraordinary and exotic significance. 'A kind of punk anthropologist, his unsettling imagination violates all the thresholds between inner and outer. ' LONDON REVIEW OF BOOKS 'Vivid and rarely whimsical' OBSERVER 'There are enough poems in this collection which are both felt AND written to justify Woodward's claim on our attention. Where he exhibits emotional generosity, he is very good indeed. 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However, The Seacunny finds this inimitable voice extend itself in new and unexpected directions, with the poet turning to the natural world and to human relationships in ways that are affecting as they are surprising. This is a book of astonishing range, and declares a new lyric direction in Woodward’s poetry.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49746174247185,"sku":"GOR005738562","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/144721742X.jpg?v=1751147519"},{"product_id":"curious-earth-book-gerard-woodward-9780393330977","title":"A Curious Earth","description":"In this successor to his Man Booker Prize                         finalist, Gerard Woodward slyly pits defiant                     Aldous  Jones against the hazards of aging.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49754671120657,"sku":"CIN0393008991G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":49915841773841,"sku":"CIN0393008991A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51002040189201,"sku":"NIN9780393330977","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51552332644625,"sku":"CIN0393330974VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52679512490257,"sku":"NLS9780393330977","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52842417979665,"sku":"GOR005984032","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0393008991.jpg?v=1750739981"},{"product_id":"caravan-thieves-book-gerard-woodward-9780701177607","title":"Caravan Thieves","description":"Contains stories, which are rooted in apparently everyday lives and situations, but suddenly become surreal or disturbing.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49972557283601,"sku":"GOR001501912","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53143571497233,"sku":"GOR003228865","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0701177608.jpg?v=1751440787"},{"product_id":"vanishing-book-gerard-woodward-9781447229759","title":"Vanishing","description":"This is the story of Kenneth Brill, a naive boy and  equally naive young man, growing up on a farm outside London. His theatrical  father is a figure of extremes: he has lost a fortune by investing in prosthetic  limbs for a war that happened too late, has killed his dwarfish music hall  partner in a knife throwing incident (unfortunately he discovered that he had a  skull with the strength of an eggshell only after a dart had penetrated it). He  has made his fortune by controlling the manure supply for the market gardens  outside London, but by the beginning of the book he has seen the confiscation of  his land by the government in order to allow the wartime expansion of Heathrow  airport. Kenneth is an unremarkable schoolboy but he had one  remarkable talent, his ability to draw. Through this he is thrown into Bohemian  30s London. This talent also leads him to become part of the allied camouflage  group in North Africa, tricking the Germans through elaborate concealment.  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