num_pages: 256
description: On a frozen island in the Falklands with only penguins for company a young would-be writer struggles to craft a debut novel...and instead writes a funny clever moving memoir that heralds the arrival of a fresh new literary talent.Twenty-seven-year-old Nell Stevens was determined to write a novel but somehow life kept getting in the way. Then came an irresistible opportunity: she won a fellowship to spend three months all expenses paid anywhere in the world to research and write a book. Did she choose a glittering metropolis a romantic village an exotic paradise? Um no. Nell chose Bleaker Island a snowy windswept pile of rock off the Falklands. There in a guesthouse where she would be the only guest she imagined she could finally rid herself of distractions and write her 2500 words a day. In three months surely she'd have a novel right?It's true that there aren't many distractions on Bleaker other than sheep penguins paranoia and the weather. But as Nell gets to work on her novel--a delightful Dickensian fiction she calls Bleaker House--she discovers that an excruciatingly erratic Internet connection and 1100 calories a day (as much food as she could carry in her suitcase budgeted to the raisin) are far from ideal conditions for literary production. With deft humour this memoir traces Nell's island days and slowly reveals details of the life and people she has left behind in pursuit of her art. They pop up in her novel as well as memoir and novel start to reflect one another. It seems that there is nowhere Nell can run--neither a remote island nor the pages of her notebook--to escape herself.A whimsical entertaining thought-provoking blend of memoir and travelogue laced with tongue-in-cheek writing advice Bleaker House brilliantly captures the hopes fears self-torture and humour of being young and yearning to make a creative life. With winning honesty and wit Nell's race to finish her book emerges as a fascinating narrative in its own right.
language: English
title: Bleaker House: Chasing My Novel to the End of the World
publisher: Knopf Canada