Review
'Seven skilfully adrenalised stories, precise and sensual, in which the scent of violence is a constant.' -- Helen Simpson, Guardian Books of the Year >> 'Reaches a standard that makes award juries sit up and take note . . . Hall's voice is strong and distinctive even, in single, elevated passages, exquisite.' -- Lionel Shriver, Financial Times >> 'Shows her characteristic ability to cause disquiet ... Hall's sharply perceptive observations strike like slaps ... There is a deeply sensual element to her writing: it is visceral and instinctive ... It's like sinking into a Rothko painting. Language is used inventively. These are stimulating, unsettling stories... [they] intrigue and mesmerise.' -- Independent on Sunday >> 'Hall evokes her landscapes with bewitchingly vivid prose. Her writing is gutteral and visceral, and her characters are raw and sinewy ... Every one of the seven tales here delights and disturbs in equal measure. The Beautiful Indifference illustrates that short fiction is indeed a finely wrought art form, and Hall is an artist of considerable and concise skill. Each story is a gem, but together they form a collection of astonishingly sensuous power ... Hall is a writer of both rare vision and talent.' -- Sunday Times >> 'These stories constantly thwart one's dramatic expectations - and are all the more dramatic for it ... This prose, particularly when used to convey the bleakness of the Cumbrian landscape, is wonderful ... She does darkness so very well.' -- The Times >> 'Sarah Hall's four novels have already shown her to be a writer of extraordinary talents, whether in the rough magic of The Carhullan Army, about female resistance in a near-future police state, or the passionate intertwined narratives of art and identity that make up the Booker-longlisted How to Paint a Dead Man. With her first short-story collection, her writing takes another leap forward, into a landscape entirely her own ....The erotic charge of Hall's writing, its fierce physical power, coexists with her characters' sense of separation: each is a world entire, and they retain their depth, their mystery.' -- --Justine Jordan, Guardian
Book Description
A new collection of short stories by Booker-shortlisted author Sarah Hall.
Product Description
From the heathered fells and lowlands of Cumbria with their history of smouldering violence, to the speed and heat of summer London, to an eerily still lake in the Finnish wilderness, Sarah Hall evokes landscapes with extraordinary precision and grace. The characters within these territories are real-life survivors, but whether it's a frustrated housewife seeking extreme experience or a young woman contemplating the death of her lover, dark devices and desires rise to the surface. And the human body, too - flawed, visceral, and full of emotional conflict - provides a sensuous frame for each unfolding drama.
Uniquely disturbing and deeply erotic, this collection confirms Sarah Hall as one of the greatest writers of her generation.
The BEAUTIFUL INDIFFERENCE includes 'Butcher's Perfume', which was short-listed for the BBC National Short Story Prize in 2010
About the Author
Sarah Hall was born in Cumbria in 1974. She received a BA from Aberystwyth University, Wales, and a MLitt in Creative Writing from St Andrews, Scotland. She is the author of Haweswater, which won the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Novel, a Society of Authors Betty Trask Award, and a Lakeland Book of the Year prize. In 2004, her second novel, The Electric Michelangelo, was short-listed for the Man Booker prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Eurasia region), and the Prix Femina Etranger, and was long-listed for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Her third novel, The Carhullan Army, was published in 2007, and won the 2006/07 John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the James Tiptree Jr. Award, a Lakeland Book of the Year prize, and was short-listed for the Arthur C. Clarke Award for science fiction. Her fourth novel, How to Paint a Dead Man, was longlisted for the 2009 Man Booker Prize and won the Portico Prize for Fiction 2010. She was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Comp 2010 for Butcher's Perfume while Vuotjavi was longlisted for the Sunday Times Short Story Award 2011.
