Andrew read Peter’s first novel, Quiver, and thought it one of the most amazing and psychologically acute debuts he’d ever read. Will novel number two make the cut?
Start Time: 19:30
Date: 2010-04-14
End Time: 21:00

Tickets are £5 (redeemable against a purchase of the book) and include a glass of wine.

Tickets are available from The Edinburgh Bookshop
Start Time: 19:30
Date: 2010-03-12
End Time: 21:00

‘Day’ was the Winner of the 2007 Costa Book of the Year Award. Will this novel measure up to the acclaim in the eys of the group? Will Alfred Day’s account of his war be comparable to Richard Hillary’s classic ‘The Last Enemy’? As a member of the group recalled reading that AL Kennedy used an actual wartime diary as a basis for the narrative, we wondered how far does the influence of fact determine the greatness of a novel?
Start Time: 19:30
Date: 2010-04-22
End Time: 21:00

It’s going to be really interesting to see how this great anti-establishment novel works more than a century after its first publication, especially as so many members of the group expressed a similar sort of general dissatisfaction with current politics and traditions to those that are more widely reported in the media.
Start Time: 19:30
Date: 2010-03-18
End Time: 21:00

It’s going to be really interesting to see how this great anti-establishment novel works more than a century after its first publication, especially as so many members of the group expressed a similar sort of general dissatisfaction with current politics and traditions to those that are more widely reported in the media.
Start Time: 19:30
Date: 2010-03-18
End Time: 21:00

A customer recommended Nicolas Dickner’s debut novel on the basis that it was ‘the best book since Richard Flanagan’s novel, Gould’s Book of Fish’. High praise.

Nicolas Dickner has won a raft of awards for the French-language edition (he’s from Quebec) of his book but remains unknown to the majority of English readers. The publisher’s own description of this fantastic novel states that: “Intricately plotted and shimmering with originality, Nikolski charts the curious and unexpected courses of personal migration, and shows how they just might eventually lead us to home…” but that doesn’t do justice to a book which offers a breathtaking and original perception of the world, written in a language and style that is both emotionally affecting and sophisticated. A treasure hunt of great inventiveness and passion, this humorous and poignant novel offers an exploration of the idea of connection.

Nikolski is a novel with a distinctive voice. In the author’s unwillingness to tidy up all loose ends, we are left with lasting imagery that creates a story comparable to the best novels of Michael Chabon, Thomas Pynchon, Georges Perec or David Mitchell.

Born thousands of miles apart, three people grow up feeling curiously at sea. In the spring of 1989 each cut themselves adrift from their birthplaces and set out to discover what — or who — might anchor them in their lives. They leave almost everything behind, carrying with them only a few artefacts of their lives so far — possessions that have proven so formative that they can’t imagine surviving without them — and the accumulated memories of their own lives and family histories.

Noah, who was taught to read using road maps during a life of nomadic travels with his mother — their home being a 1966 Bonneville station wagon with a silver trailer — decides to leave the prairies for university in Montreal. But putting down roots there turns out to be a more transitory experience than he expected. Joyce, stifled by life in a remote village on Quebec’s Lower North Shore, and her overbearing relatives, hitches a ride into Montreal, spurred on by a news story about a modern-day cyber-pirate and the spirit of her own buccaneer ancestors. While her daily existence remains surprisingly routine —working at a fish shop in Jean-Talon market, dumpster-diving at night for necessities — it’s her Internet piracy career that takes off. And then there’s the unnamed narrator, who we first meet clearing out his deceased mother’s house on Montreal’s South Shore, and who decides to move into the city to start a new life. There he finds his true home among books, content to spend his days working in a used bookstore and journeying though the many worlds books open up for him.

Over the course of the next ten years, Noah, Joyce and the unnamed bookseller will sometimes cross paths, and sometimes narrowly miss each other, as they all pass through one vibrant neighbourhood on Montreal’s Plateau. Their journeys seem remarkably unformed, more often guided by the prevailing winds than personal will, yet their stories weave in and out of other wondrous tales — stories about such things as fearsome female pirates, urban archaeologists, unexpected floods, fish of all kinds, a mysterious book without a cover and a dysfunctional compass whose needle obstinately points to the remote Aleutian village of Nikolski. And it is in the magical accumulation of those details around the edges of their lives that we begin to know these individuals as part of a greater whole, and ultimately realize that anchors aren’t at all permanent, really; rather, they’re made to be hoisted up and held in reserve until their strength is needed again.

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You can watch an interview with Nicolas talking about Nikolski here on YouTube.

From deep down in the interweb, I found a review from The Guardian online by author Patrick Ness for those who are interested in reading more.

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Different passages will stand out for each reader but a personal favourite includes this description of the peculiar world of the bookshop: “The work is not as simple as it may appear; the S. W. Gam Bookshop is one of those places in the universe where humans long ago relinquished any control over matter… it takes more than good pair of eyes and a few ounces of memory to work here. It’s crucial to develop a particular perception of time. The thing is – what’s the best way of putting this? – that different avatars of our bookshop coexist simultaneously in a multitude of discrete times, separated by very thin ellipses.”

Tickets are £5 (redeemable against a purchase of the book) and include a glass of wine.

Tickets are available from The Edinburgh Bookshop
Start Time: 19:30
Date: 2010-03-12
End Time: 21:00