Absolutely delighted – ‘The Night Brother’ has received good reviews in both The Times and The Sunday Times!

“The Night Brother by Rosie Garland is a rich and ambitious tale set in late Victorian Manchester… Garland’s prose is a delight: playful and exuberant. There are shades of Angela Carter in the mad world she creates... Full marks for style”.

Toni Senior 3rd June 2017
Full review here:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/historical-fiction-w09l76frb

“Echoes of Angela Carter’s more fantastical fiction reverberate through this exuberant tale… Garland’s narrative is enjoyably energetic.”
Nick Rennison 18th June 2017

Full review here:
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/books-fiction-at-a-glance-all-the-good-things-by-clare-fisher-the-answers-by-catherine-lacey-the-night-brother-by-rosie-garland-splash-by-stephen-glover-the-idiot-by-elif-batuman-gkbbb3852

The John Rylands Library – Darkness & Light: Exploring the Gothic

The exhibition brochure is out... I am delighted to have an essay featured in it, to accompany the Gothic Women case I curated for the exhibition.

Here's the text of the feature, for those who aren't able to get to Manchester before December 2015. It really is worth making a visit – the exhibition has some wonderful displays. Check out the website for more info, times etc.

Click to visit The John Rylands Library website page

Women & the Gothic
"The Gothic: abject, unreliable, dangerous and downright weird.
Which also sums up how I've felt about myself since realising I didn't fit the one-size-fits-all template of marriage, kids and sublimation to the wishes of others (age 5, if you're asking). I've always felt like an outsider, which has not always been easy.

The Gothic has an extensive history of being ridiculed. In the 1980s, NME dismissed us as an uncool fad (we're still here, the NME isn't); Wordsworth and Coleridge wrote off Gothic literature as 'the trash of the circulating library'; Renaissance scholars dismissed 1000 years of art, erudition and scientific endeavour as 'The Dark Ages'; the Romans laughed off Alaric and his Goths as barbarian nobodies (and look what happened to them).

The Gothic endures, despite never being quite in fashion, despite existing on the fringes. Perhaps that explains its allure and its terror. All of us have cobwebbed dungeons in the psyche. They are frightening places, and we are sold the lie that if we paint our world pastel shades and furnish it with white leather sofas everything will be all right. We ignore personal darkness at our psychological peril. Far wiser, in my humble opinion, is to explore the haunted castle and face those fearsome ghosts.

With that in mind and with lantern held aloft in trembling fingers, I undertook the challenge of making a personal selection reflecting Women and the Gothic. There was no way that my wish-list could be displayed. That would have filled The John Rylands Library in all its Gothic beauty.

Some choices are well-known, some are hidden from history. I was drawn to writers who were not content to follow, neither in their lives nor in their works. In the Gothic they discovered imaginative possibilities and seized those opportunities with verve and dynamism. They pushed the boundaries of the Gothic, using it to challenge and inform. Their writing transcends expectations. Here you will find no absent or marginalised gothic heroines, no quivering victims of Gothic male fantasy.

Here be dragons."

Waterstones Newcastle
Emerson Chambers,
Blackett Street,
Newcastle, NE1 7JF

Tickets are £3, available in store or online.

The Night Brother
We are thrilled to welcome Rosie Garland in conversation with Kaite Walsh to discuss her new book, 'The Night Brother'.

From the author of The Palace of Curiosities and Vixen comes a bold new novel exploring questions of identity, sexual equality and how well we really know ourselves. Perfect for fans of Angela Carter, Sarah Waters and Erin Morgenstern.
Rich are the delights of late nineteenth-century Manchester for young siblings Edie and Gnome. They bicker, banter, shout and scream their way through the city's streets, embracing its charms and dangers. But as the pair grow up, it is Gnome who revels in the night-time, while Edie wakes exhausted each morning, unable to quell a sickening sense of unease, with only a dim memory of the dark hours.

With echoes of Orlando and Jekyll & Hyde, this is a story about the vital importance of being honest with yourself. Every part of yourself. After all, no-one likes to be kept in the dark.

We look forward to seeing you there.

https://www.waterstones.com/events/rose-garland-and-katie-walsh/newcastle
Situated in a beautiful building opposite Grey's Monument, designed by celebrated architect Benjamin Simpson, the booksellers of Emerson Chambers love nothing more than to share their love of reading with our customers.