A Song Against Dying
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Publishing:25th Mar '27
£20.00
This title is due to be published on 25th March, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
A memoir about love, grief, addiction and the power of poetry to bring back the dead.
‘Hauntingly original… like nothing else I’ve read’ Alan Hollinghurst
'A moving and perfectly-pitched memoir which proves, amongst all its grief, a sort of magic: that the dead can live again in words, and that they visit us in unexpected ways' Seán Hewitt
Where do you go to find someone who is dead?
In 1996, in a ramshackle office at the heart of literary London, Maren Meinhardt met Mick Imlah. Charismatic, handsome, difficult, Mick was one of the most brilliant poets of his generation. In pub corners, local restaurants and football pitches, they fell in love.
But then, on the brink of major success, Mick died.
Years later, Maren sets out to find him again, in the places he loved and the words he left behind. She seeks for clues on the island of Iona, on the shorelines of Scotland, in the Scottish Borders; she travels to ‘thin’ places associated with folklore, ghosts and poets. Searching through his books and papers, Maren reflects on whether poetry has the power to recover what is lost. A beautifully written, surprising and candid account of love and literature.
A moving and perfectly-pitched memoir which proves, amongst all its grief, a sort of magic: that the dead can live again in words, and that they visit us in unexpected ways. Weaving through landscapes, poems, and the ordinary miracles of life, A SONG AGAINST DYING is a deeply human book. * Seán Hewitt, author of Open, Heaven *
A Song Against Dying is a beautiful book, a heartbreaking book, and as loving a book as I have ever read. For those who admire Mick Imlah’s work but never met the man, he is here to be met; for those who are not yet familiar with Maren Meinhardt’s work, here to be discovered is a writer whose own gifts merit serious and grateful attention. * Shane McCrae, author of In the Language of My Captor *
A haunting, questing memoir that balances its account of tumult, bewilderment and grief with sudden touches of grace and an elfin, otherworldly quality that made me catch my breath... Extraordinary, moving and unnervingly honest. * Miranda Seymour, author of I Used to Live Here Once: The Haunted Life of Jean Rhys *
A heartbreaking love song - to a poet and to the art of poetry * A. N. Wilson, author of Goethe: His Faustian Life *
This is a very open but scrupulously-written account of a precarious and uncompleted happiness. How to cope with the unusual and ultimately inexplicable trials of someone you love makes for an absorbing read, but the fact that the loved one was a poet of unique and outstanding promise, undermined by alcoholism and then cruelly cut down in his prime by motor neurone disease, gives it an extra literary importance... It is a determinedly original kind of biography built around a semi-mystical quest which will resonate with any reader who has experienced such loss. It is also engagingly detailed, and anything likely to be found too painful is transcended by candour and an accuracy of emotional response. * John Fuller, author of Marston Meadows *
ISBN: 9781399432894
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
192 pages