Peter Hobbs (1)Recensioni

Sex and Death is a mixed bag of stories full of, you guessed it, sex and death.

This anthology features a large array of short stories. I say it's a mixed bag because, like any set of stories, some of them are amazing and some of them don't hit as well. What I've found is that it really depends on what type of reader you are. I really enjoyed some of the stories focusing on the family structure - George and Elizabeth by Ben Marcus, Fixations by Ceridwen Dovey, and Evie by Sarah Hall. The stories had me hooked and interested and somehow left me wanting so much more out of them. I wanted entire books for those stories! They were intriguing, well written and absolutely fantastic!

To highlight my three favourites:

George and Elizabeth follows George after his father died. He's in the process of seeing a therapist and reaches out to his sister. He meets his Father's ex-half-wife and participates in some situations that he might actually need therapy for. This slice of life story is crafted so beautifully that I wanted a full length novel of this book. George and "Pattern" (Elizabeth) are unique characters with a unique relationship. I need to find more books by Ben Marcus because he is just phenomenal at writing!

Fixations by Ceridwen Dovey follows Selene after the birth of her child. The difficulties of post-partum life and having medical procedures was really interesting to follow. Hearing Selene's point of view about how the midwives think she has post-partum depression but really it's from the physical pain of the childbirth was eye opening. I couldn't pull myself away from this book! Yet again, Ceridwen Dovey has an addicting writing style!

Evie by Sarah Hall follows a romantic pair who dip into something new. Tragedy strikes during their slice of life, and a relationship will be tested. This story was just too darn short! I wanted to see the fallout of everything that was happening because Sarah managed to get me attached to these characters. It is absolutely amazing what some authors can do with their words!

All of the other stories were well written but just didn't hit me like those three did. But, that's the point of an anthology! There are many different types of stories around one topic (this one being sex and death). Honestly, the way these authors dove into mental health, sex, ambition, life, and death was truly incredible. Hats off to these guys! Despite every author having a different writing style, all of these books felt like they fit in and that they should be winning some kind of award!

Some of the stories end in tragedy, some feature happy endings and some are just... there. There are very short stories and there are longer stories. What Sarah Hall and Peter Hobbs have done is craft a beautifully arranged anthology that definitely should be in more readers' hands!

Overall, this was a marvelous read and I'm really happy I got the chance to read it! I've been staring at this book for ages while it sat on my shelf. I finally got the nerve to pick it up and devour it!

Four out of five stars! The stories ranged from one to five stars, but it'd be a shame to give it anything less than a four. As a complete set, this book stands out!!

I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.

Abandoned.

I am obviously a fan of poetic novels, so I was eager to read this when reviews cited its poetic style and how psychologically resonant the interior life, musings, and grief of the narrator were rendered.

I found the latter to be the book's strength; however, I could no longer read after the midway point due to what felt like trite and contrived prose. The pacing and style felt almost as if the book were directed to young adult audiences, and that's not a genre I read at all.

Perhaps Ali Smith's praise for this novel set my expectations too high. Perhaps I'm just not in a sappy, love-lost kind of mood.

I did not finish this book. This is a collection of short stories, I read three of them and gave up. The point of a short story is to have a moral, or some sort of reason for existing, but these have nothing. An example of this would be (spoiler warning, I suppose? Not that there can really be spoilers as there are no twists or conclusions to any of the stories that I read) the third story is about a woman who has developed an anal fissure after giving birth. The story is just a documentation of how it is difficult and painful for her to use the toilet, then in the end she gets surgery. That's it. The ending is her lying in the operating table, falling asleep due to the anaesthetic. The first two stories were just as pointless and bizarre!

Maybe I'm not smart enough to understand the point in these, or maybe this just isn't the book for me, but this is the first book I have ever given up on and I look forward to returning it to my local library.

This book is a love poem.

I stay clear of love stories. I grew up watching old black and white movies, and reading books like Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre and Rebecca, and falling in love over and over again. In my imagination I was always in love.

I don't think that I am really so different now, but love itself is very different: much broader, yet much more precise, and not at all related to the tangled relationship of two individuals.

I've wondered at this distaste of mine, at the undeniable feeling of boredom that arises when I am faced with what are called "love stories" in books. (I don't mind seeing some romantic movies to pass the time, but the thought of reading a book whose plot is focused on "love achieved" feels like a punishment.) When does "believing in love" become an exercise in the "suspension of disbelief"?

This beautiful book is a tender rendition of a young man's doomed love for a young woman. They have but moments together, when they are still children, but the penalty for these moments is severe. They are separated, and the young man's life is forever altered. His tale, written in the first-person, is a love affair with his memory of this very young love. It has kept him alive. And his voice is cautious and sad, but hopeful, too, as he writes.

It's a love letter, a record of change (changes in our bodies, our spirits, our wounds and recovery, our home, our hopes, our country), and a farewell. I am touched by the tenderness of this author's imagination. In writing this, he expresses a love that is simpler than the convoluted dramas we know too well. Perhaps it's an imagined love, which they all seem to be, abiding within my modern cynicism, yet entirely believable in its simplicity. Maybe my early reading created this desire in me to make love an uncomplicated thing. So that with this book, I was able to rest in its beauty, as I do in a poem.

A sweet, sad book, that I am very glad to have read. This review is not worthy of Peter Hobbs's short and fluid work of beauty. The changing landscape, the fragrant orchard of pomegranates and swallows, the skies and dusty path, the brilliant example of Abbas, the kind scholar, and even of the child Alifa, in her imperious and likely terrible destiny, will stay with me. They are not filled-in characters, but vignettes in what a life would look like from the view of a hopeful person looking in, from the outside, seeing what he (she) wants to see, and finding that his love of love (life) informs his vision. A vision of what life (love) is, and what it could be.

All the stories are good but 'Evie' by Sarah Hall stands out.

An utterly lonely and introspective novel; narrated by a young trainee blacksmith and part-time preacher in 19th century SW England. In his pastoral visits to a dying blind girl, he seems to find his own faith somewhat lacking in contrast to her unwavering certainty. And as the solitude, comfortless lifestyle and a growing awareness of the futility of his mission in an apathetic society take hold, he seems plunged into an overwhelming depression.

The writing is so beautiful, as Charles Wenmoth tramps miles through the countryside, mulling on his Creator. He thinks longingly of days gone by, of time passing by:
"The hours desert us while we still have hold on them and though we open our hands to see what it is we grip we find our hands are empty. This present where we live is an impossible point it cannot be. There is nothing other than a falling into eternity our freedom taken from us in the rush of time."

This novel affirms the human need to hold fast to the possibility of love and beauty against the overwhelming forces of circumstance and history, which like a tidal wave threaten the human heart with annihilation. The few minutes of nectar-like bliss the narrator experiences with Saba are like seeds planted in the narrator's soul, and these seeds will come to fruition as the gift of the text itself to Saba, regardless of her reality.

This short novel was basically an extended letter from the protagonist to his forbidden sweetheart, Saba. After fifteen years of imprisonment, illness, abuse and torture, the young slowly starts to recover, and in a small garden he writes to his beloved about the present and the years that have separated them. Each day he visits his family's old orchard where he finds peace and contentment.

I loved Abbas, the poet, who took the young man in and tended to his physical and emotional injuries. His gentleness and kindness played a key role in the healing process.

"In the Orchard, the Swallows" was a gentle, heart-breaking story about love, survival and the human condition. The last chapter, especially, was absolutely beautiful.

A brilliantly, economical novel, which is written like one long love letter. A Pakistan boy is imprisoned and tortured for 15 years because he was found sleeping in his father's orchard with the daughter of a political figure. It's his love for the girl that gets him through the 15 years.

I would like to think that books, like people, can be extroverts and introverts; if that is the case, Peter Hobbs’ novel The Short Day Dying is definitely an introvert, concerned with an inner life and a man’s private experiences of the world. Published in 2005, it is a very quiet book which faithfully records the thoughts and feelings of the main character, Charles, a young blacksmith and lay-preacher living in a remote coastal area of England in 1870. Not quite a diary, it does have the feeling of a personal journal, recording changes in Charles’ life as he passes through the seasons of a year.

Charles works during the week in the forge and on Sundays he travels across the country to preach at small, almost deserted chapels in the wild country where he lives. He pins up biblical tracts in the hope that they will inspire people, despite the decline in the importance of religion to people’s lives. He also visits the sick and one person in particular becomes very important to him, a young blind girl called Harriet, who is suffering from a serious illness that is never defined.

Charles visits Harriet’s family regularly and begins to look forward to the time he spends with Harriet, talking or just sitting with her while she rests. He is inspired by her religious faith, which he comes to realise is stronger than his own despite all her suffering in life. His visits to her are moments of happiness in his sometimes arduous and wearying life. It is easy to realise how Charles feels about Harriet even though he never says it. Although, as I said, the book is introspective, Charles is still something of a mystery to himself and sometimes the reader can see or sense what Charles would never put into words. The book is full of feelings both expressed and unexpressed.

Hobbs’ writing about the landscape is very beautiful. It contains wonderful, dramatic visual descriptions and conveys how much the natural world means to Charles. This was something I loved about the book, the way I could imagine the wildness of the moors and the sea. The passage below also shows you the unusual way the book is punctuated, as if to recreate Charles’ speaking or thinking voice.

‘The farmland fell behind us and the land changed we came onto the cliff and I first saw the sea it were a beautiful thing a fine living cloth spread out to the horizon. I could not believe it were so vast. A deep shifting blue richer than the sky. The smell of salt so keen I could taste it on my tongue. The sight awed me furnished a view which has burned in my memory these years. It felt as though the scene had been waiting for me a long time.’

I would highly recommend The Short Day Dying. It is a unique and beautifully written novel which memorably describes the thoughts and feelings of the main character and the beauty of the coastal landscape. [2011]

In the orchard, the swallows is not just a simple love story, although just such a simple love story forms the basis of this cruel tale. In the orchard, the swallows is a modern Romeo and Juliet set in modern time in Pakistan. Not death, but spiritual death separates the lovers. The young man thrown into prison, which he barely survives, to be forgotten, cut off from the world, his love, and father, who dies during his imprisonment. Upon his release, he is nursed back, taken into the home by an old man. Recovering, pensively, he writes this heart-rending account of life in a note-book. His cruel experience is transient, while love, cruelty, human nature, and nature are for ever.

In the orchard, the swallows contains beautiful descriptions of nature, the orchard, and the soothing presence of the swallows, perhaps a symbol of homeliness. Some parts of the book consist of telling, or lamenting monologues, which are a little bit overbearing. The setting in Pakistan is a bit estranging, but apparently rendered quite convincingly and true.½

More an extended prose poem than a novel, this slim volume offers a heart-wrenching account of young love, unthinkable sadness, and haunting questions that may never be answered.

Quiet and lyrical and beautiful, a slender little masterpiece set in Pakistan about a young man who has been released from prison after a 15 year sentence for nothing. The years have taken their toll psychologically and physically, and he is a shell of whom he might have been but he is determined, step by step, to make a life for himself, starting with telling his story. And that's as far as this little gem gets, but it's so memorable and perfect. It reminds me of Atiq Rahimi in its spareness and simplicity describing interior and exterior landscapes.
http://www.bostonbibliophile.com/2014/03/review-in-orchards-swallows-by-peter.ht...

okay, so i had to take a bit of times to process this read and while i have a few things to say about this beautiful book, i can't guarantee any coherence of my thoughts. this book has sort-of...rendered me dumb. though probably "awe-struck" is a better term? :)

going into this read, i was very aware of hobbs's backstory: 15 years ago, while travelling in pakistan, hobbs became very ill. so sick from a crazy virus that attacked his immune system and confounded doctors, in fact, that he was rendered disabled and not able to work or even function for 10 years. and while he is not totally "better" he is at a point where he can entertain choices about how to live and how to earn a living.

so, this information was very present in my mind while reading the story of a young man, imprisoned at the age of 14. he endures torture and is held for 15 years (all for falling in love with a girl above his station). hobbs maintains the prison arc was not an allegory for his own illness, but it's hard to not make that connection.

hobbs's writing is exquisite - spare, exact and beautiful. as a reader i was pulled into our unnamed narrator's love, heartache and pain. so much is conveyed so simply with the prose and while our narrator experiences horrible things, i was left feeling, very strongly, this person, this story was full of hope, and humanity and compassion can still be found in this world in the most unlikely places.

mark medley, writing in the national post did a wonderful feature on peter hobbs, back in may of this year.

i am very grateful there are publishing houses and editors willing (and keen) to take on books that are quieter and less mainstream. i hope to convince many people to read this amazing book!!

I'm completely in sync, I'm completely in love: with these stories, with the story of this author, with the face in the photo of this author (appearing in the Globe & Mail) - [not on this book jacket.] Peter Hobbs, where have you been all my life?

A superb piece of writing: the central character is a preacher struggling with his life and his faith. He is relatively uneducated, only knows the Bible, and so that is how he writes, sentences without punctuation, non-idiomatic construction. It is absolutely wonderful. It was shortlisted for the Whitbread Best First Novel in 2005, and I'd like to know who won, as this would be hard to beat.
Oh, and it is also short. Long enough, but short.

While it is true that the author's choice to tell this story in the way he did, without commas, and the consistent use of the word "were" in first person, may jar the reader at first, one soon gets into the rhythm of the narrative. On reaching the end of his tale, the narrator feels like a personal friend, one whom I did not want to stop talking. This is beautiful writing, though the story leaves one feeling lonely.
Not to fear however, Peter Hobbs has already produced an excellent collection of short stories wherein he's experimented with different voices and form. I look forward to whatever he chooses to publish next.

This novel in set in rural England in 1870. The narrator & main character is a 27-year-old apprentice blacksmith & lay Methodist preacher. In short chapters that read very much like weekly journal entries, with regularized spelling but irregular punctuation & run-on sentences, he recounts his spiritual & material struggles over the course of that one year. His faith is inspired by the faith of a suffering young dying woman he visits regularly, but when she dies he himself suffers a "darkness" that he cannot shake. It is a story of longing for a simpler past and both a long and a fear for the future--a longing for a future he seems to have only a dim hope of attaining and a fear that he will be alone in his darkness. From my knowledge of religious history (including a reading of some journals of early 19th-century Methodist preachers), this all appears very authentic historically--a remarkable achievement especially in capturing a past age of faith (and doubt)--but it also seems to speak to the contemporary experience of twenty-something college grads (like 2 of my daughters) who have not yet quite mapped out their future. It also spoke to my current spiritual crisis, though not in a particularly hopeful way. 3All in all, a very remarkable book, though I should add that I admired it more than I liked it.

I believe this book to be a quiet masterpiece. Read it.

nothing I was crazy about, an average read. traveling.