In Bolt from the Blue, Jeremy Cooper, the winner of the 2018 Fitzcarraldo Editions Novel Prize, charts the relationship between a mother and daughter over the course of thirty-odd years. In October 1985, Lynn moves down to London to enrol at Saint Martin's School of Art, leaving her mother behind in a suburb of Birmingham. Their relationship is complicated, and their primary form of contact is through the letters, postcards and emails they send each other periodically, while Lynn slowly makes her mark on the London art scene.
A novel in epistolary form, Bolt from the Blue captures the waxing and waning of the mother-daughter relationship over time, achieving a rare depth of feeling with a deceptively simple literary form.
In Bolt from the Blue, Jeremy Cooper, the winner of the 2018 Fitzcarraldo Editions Novel Prize, charts the relationship between a mother and daughter over the course of thirty-odd years. In October 1985, Lynn moves down to London to enrol at Saint Martin's School of Art, leaving her mother behind in a suburb of Birmingham. Their relationship is complicated, and their primary form of contact is through the letters, postcards and emails they send each other periodically, while Lynn slowly makes her mark on the London art scene.
A novel in epistolary form, Bolt from the Blue captures the waxing and waning of the mother-daughter relationship over time, achieving a rare depth of feeling with a deceptively simple literary form.
Jeremy Cooper is a writer and art historian, author of five previous novels and several works of non-fiction, including the standard work on nineteenth century furniture, studies of young British artists in the 1990s, and, in 2019, the British Museum's catalogue of artists' postcards. Early on he appeared in the first twenty-four of BBC's Antiques Roadshow and, in 2018, won the first Fitzcarraldo Editions Novel Prize for Ash before Oak.
'A novel written in epistolary form, Cooper has maximised the
potential of this literary convention to achieve a work of great
depth and quiet power. Over three decades, a mother and her artist
daughter communicate only by letters, excavating their relationship
as it evolves with melancholic, astute precision. At times
spellbinding and mesmerising, the work also proves provocative and
inspirational. As much a love letter to the lost art of
letter-writing as it is a thirty year-long dialogue of familial
love, Cooper has produced an understated book that nonetheless
resonates powerfully. This book is deeply sensitive to the ebb and
flow of relationships over time and the way love is disguised,
expressed and experienced, and it achieves that elusive dream of
all authors and finds new meaning in the recording of life.' -
Helen Cullen, Irish Times
'Bolt from the Blue is a venturesome, epistolary fiction spanning
over 30 years.' - Catherine Taylor, Financial Times
'A novel in epistolary form, the writer and art historian's latest
work is both an intimate account of a mother-daughter relationship
and a lively history of London's art scene. It is October 1985 when
Lynn moves to the capital to study at Saint Martin's, later making
a successful career as an artist. She and her mother, who is back
at home in Birmingham, begin a 30-year-long written relationship -
via letters, postcards and emails. Their contact is irregular, and
by turns affectionate and combative, making the relationship feel
engrossing, deep and utterly true.' - New Statesman
'Jeremy Cooper's work is consistently haunting and layered, built
on a refreshing trust in the reader to delve deeper behind the
quiet insinuations of his prose. His work resists every modern
accelerant, creating a patient and precise tonic. He is easily one
of the most thoughtful British fiction writers working today.' -
Adam Scovell, author of How Pale the Winter Has Made Us
'Bolt from the Blue is a scintillating, wistful exploration of a
good career and a poor relationship. Pithy yet expansive, it's an
essential, engrossing, illuminating read for any aspiring artist.'
- Sara Baume, author of Handiwork
'There's a strange magic to Jeremy Cooper's writing. The way he
puts words together creates an incantatory effect. Reading him is
to be spellbound, then. I have no idea how he does it, only that I
am seduced.' - Ben Myers, author of The Offing
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