A Book for All and None by Clare Morgan

A Book for All and None

Clare Morgan

A story about love in later life going wrong and the pull of the past. If your ancestral story included Nietsche, his lover and her supposed acquaintance with Virginia Woolf that's a challenge; if you’re an authority on Nietsche and your lover is studying Woolf expect a tangle. Throw in a house in the woods, a farmhouse, and another house in Wales, full of people overcome by Celtic gloom, and you'll have an idea of how strange this book is.

Extract
He goes up to the nursery and breathes in the heady chemical of the Eggshell. On the wall opposite the foot of the cot is the picture of the knight and his lady that Beatrice gave him. The extreme beauty of the needlework has, in the shadows of the downtown hallway, been a little less evident. Here, placed to be the first thing that his son will see on waking, the towers of Camelot stand up in a particular perfection, their delicacy such that they might be breakable.
Parallels
  • The Bellwether Revivals by Benjamin Wood
  • The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst
  • To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf