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Bitter Orange published in two months

/ Claire Fuller / 5 Comments

Bitter Orange jacket: Oranges and dark leaves, with smashed plate

 

In two months, Bitter Orange, my third novel will be published in the UK by Fig Tree / Penguin. Lots of proofs have gone out, and reviews from booksellers and quotes from other authors are starting to come in, and suddenly it feels very real. Exciting and terrifying.

In anticipation of the publication, I thought you might like to read the first paragraph, and if it tempts you, links for pre-ordering are below.

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They must think I don’t have long left, because today they allow the vicar in. Perhaps they are right, although this day feels no different from yesterday, and I imagine tomorrow will go on much the same. The vicar – no, not vicar, he has a different title, I forget – is older than me by a good few years, his hair is grey, and his skin is flaky and red, sore-looking. I didn’t ask for him; what faith I’d once had was tested and found lacking at Lyntons, and before that my church attendance was a habit, a routine for Mother and me to arrange our week around. I know all about routine and habit in this place. It is what we live, and what we die, by.

*

I’d love you to go into your local independent book shop and pre-order Bitter Orange, or your local chain book shop. But if that’s not possible, you can pre-order here online:  here (UK), here (US), or here (Canada).

 

The Oddest Thing Found in a UK library book

/ Claire Fuller / 5 Comments

Reading agency

I’ve recently had the good fortune (or perhaps misfortune) to judge the winner of the oddest thing ever found in a library book for the Reading Agency, and it was an illuminating experience.

It seems readers are a mucky lot. Librarians found a lot of unmentionables, that I’m not of course, going to mention, as well as a great deal of food. Bacon rashers – cooked and raw – featured prominently, as did chocolate bars, or their wrappers, orange peel, a chicken bone (we hope!), and mummified pizza. One librarian even found a fried egg, while another came across a kipper (luckily still in its vacuum-packed plastic).

A few readers were more considerate of those wonderful people who look after our books, and inserted between the pages ‘A Note From Emily,’ saying why she’d enjoyed the book, and in another, a letter saying how much that borrower loved their library.

But people can be forgetful, clearly grabbing the closest thing to hand to use as a bookmark, including postcards, a ‘herbal’ cigarette, train tickets, receipts, hairclips, loo roll, ribbons, spooky tarot cards, and quite a bit of money. Some of the money was reunited with its owners, as was the baby scan photo found in a parenting book.

However, librarians aren’t completely blameless when it comes to forgetfulness. Staff at one library found a debit card in a book and just as a particular librarian started criticising the stupidity of the debit card owner, she looked at the card and it was hers. Another library found a red sock in a fiction book which was claimed by an ex member of staff. When she was asked about it, she said she couldn’t find anything else to use as a bookmark.

But after sifting through all the entries, I’m pleased to announce that the winner is the entry from Rachael Smart (@smartrachael) on Twitter, who runs the book club for The Motherload. She found the sinisterly beautiful and appropriate, pressed cabbage white butterfly, ‘fragile as lace, tucked inside the pages of The Silence of the Lambs’.

Thank you to everyone who entered. You have given me a great deal of entertainment, even if that did include quite a bit of squealing in disgust.

And to read about the oddest things that Americans found in library books click here.

Bitter Orange UK Cover Reveal

/ Claire Fuller / 10 Comments

Bitter Orange jacket: Oranges and dark leaves, with smashed plate

I’m very excited to be able to let you see the UK cover design for Bitter Orange. The book will be published by Fig Tree, an imprint of Penguin on 2nd August. I absolutely love the oranges design and the broken plate (very relevant to the story), but I’d really like to know what you think. I’m also very grateful to Gabriel Tallent (author of My Absolute Darling), for his wonderful quote.

The book is already available to pre-order from your friendly local independent book shop, or from those online places (you know where).

Here’s the jacket copy for the proof (the final wording is likely to change)

Description of what Bitter Orange is about.

If you’d like to see what the US cover will be, click here.

 

Cover Reveal for Bitter Orange (US)

/ Claire Fuller / 15 Comments

Bitter Orange_cover hi-res.jpg

I’m absolutely delighted to reveal the cover for the US version of my third novel, Bitter Orange, which will be published on October 9th by Tin House. I’d love to know what you think!

From the attic of Lyntons, a dilapidated English country mansion, Frances Jellico sees them―Cara first: dark and beautiful, then Peter: striking and serious. The couple is spending the summer of 1969 in the rooms below hers while Frances is researching the architecture in the surrounding gardens. But she’s distracted. Beneath a floorboard in her bathroom, she finds a peephole that gives her access to her neighbors’ private lives.

Before long they are spending every day together: eating lavish dinners, drinking bottle after bottle of wine, and smoking cigarettes until the ash piles up on the crumbling furniture. Frances is dazzled. But as the hot summer rolls lazily on, it becomes clear that not everything is right between Cara and Peter. The stories that Cara tells don’t quite add up, and as Frances becomes increasingly entangled in the lives of the hedonistic couple, the boundaries between truth and lies, right and wrong, begin to blur. Amid the decadence, a small crime brings on a bigger one: a crime so terrible that it will brand their lives forever.

Bitter Orange is available to pre-order from your local independent bookstore (please consider using them first), or Amazon.

(The UK cover will be revealed in the next few weeks.)

What’s the oddest thing you’ve ever found in a library book?

/ Claire Fuller / 3 Comments

Reading agency

Win a reading set of Swimming Lessons

Following on from the US competition about the oddest thing ever found in a library book, a UK version has now been launched. The Reading Agency and Penguin want librarians and UK book groups to tell them the oddest thing they’ve found in a book, for a chance to win a reading set of my latest novel, Swimming Lessons.

The book is partly about Ingrid, who writes letters to her husband and hides them in the books that he collects. And he collects books for their marginalia and the things that previous readers have left behind in them.

It’s always fascinated me – what gets left in a book. It makes me think about the person who read it before me and what they thought of it, or perhaps where they were when they were reading and what else they were doing, because I suspect that not everything left behind in library books should really be there, not even as bookmarks. The American competition turned up many instances of food and other things that people put between the pages for safe keeping and forgot.

To enter, either email your entry to kathleen.ktorides@readingagency.org.uk or tweet it using #SwimmingLessons and tagging @ReadingAgency. The competition closes on 8 March when I’ll judge the weirdest entry. The winner will receive 12 signed copies of Swimming Lessons for their reading group or UK public library.

If you’d like book group questions for either my first novel, Our Endless Numbered Days, or for Swimming Lessons, drop me a line.

And if you’re in a book group, I’d recommend you joining the Reading Agency – it’s free and there’s lots of information on books that make good book group reads, as well as the occasional giveaway.

UK Paperback of Swimming Lessons Published Today

/ Claire Fuller / 2 Comments

SL Paperback

Today the paperback version of Swimming Lessons is published in the UK by Penguin. If you’d like to win one of two copies head over to my Instagram account: @writerclairefuller to find out how to enter.

If you’re thinking about what book to read next, and you’re considering reading Swimming Lessons in your book group, get in touch if you would like some questions to help get the discussion started.

And if you’ve already read Swimming Lessons and enjoyed it, please do tell your friends, or leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Thank you!

Swimming Lessons Paperback Published in US

/ Claire Fuller / 4 Comments

SL1

The paperback of Swimming Lessons is published in the US today. My publisher, Tin House, has created a beautiful version of the hardback jacket using darker tones. And this version has book club questions in the back. If you do read it for your book club remember to take a picture of your group with the book and I’ll post the best to my Instagram account.

UK readers will have to wait a little longer for the paperback to be released.

The pictures above were taken and posted by some wonderful bookstagrammers, and if you’re on Instagram, I’d highly recommend following them all, not only for some wonderful bookish features, but lots of friendly bookish chat and reading suggestions.

Click to read more about Swimming Lessons.

Thanks to: @theloudlibrarylady @gracerajendran @bkInbooks @booksforyears @booksonherbrain @dlgillis20 @les_livres_ jennicapps15 @lblovesbooks for the pictures.

Third Novel: Bitter Orange

/ Claire Fuller / 16 Comments

The Grange

I’m delighted that my third novel, Bitter Orange, will be published in 2018, by Fig Tree / Penguin (August) in the UK and Commonwealth, Tin House (October) in the US, and House of Anansi (October) in Canada.

Here’s a little taster of what it’s about:

Frances Jellico is dying and remembering when, in the summer of 1969 she was commissioned to survey the follies in the garden of Lyntons – a decrepit and almost derelict country house. There, living in the attic for a month or so, she meets Cara and Peter who are staying in the rooms below hers. As Frances falls under her new friends’ spell and she learns their stories, the house offers up its own secrets, until her life is changed forever.

Lyntons is inspired by The Grange (the house in the picture above), in Hampshire, a fascinating Greek Revival style house, managed by English Heritage.

Win a Book Club in a Box

/ Claire Fuller / Leave a comment

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My US publisher, Tin House, and Literary Hub, a daily news source for all things literary, have got together to offer US book clubs the chance to win a Swimming Lessons Book Club in a Box.

The prize is some earl grey tea (my favourite), biscuits (or cookies to all you Americans), book club questions, signed book plates, and a Skype call with me when your group meets to discuss the book.

Enter here.

Find out more about Swimming Lessons, or contact me if your book club is already reading Swimming Lessons and you’d like some questions.