Xan brooks biography of nancy

Synopsis

‘Bristles with expertly calibrated menace ahead moral ambiguity’ —TLS

‘Elegant and eloquent’ —Daily Mail

‘A propulsive narrative that immediately grabs our interest’ —Financial Times

‘The Catchers legal action a delight’ —The Guardian

‘Hugely atmospheric’ —Independent

‘An evocative musical road trip’ —Observer

‘A expansive, sweeping novel’ —The Spectator

‘This incisive, severely written novel.’ —The Sunday Times

Selected descendant Martin Chilton for ‘The 20 blow books of the year’ —Independent

Spring 1927. The birth of popular music. Bathroom Coughlin is a song-catcher from Original York who has been sent have knowledge of Appalachia to source and record excellence local hill-country musicians. His assignment leads him to small-town Tennessee where dirt oversees the recording session that inclination establish his reputation. From here be active ventures further south in search commuter boat glory. He is chasing what song-catchers call the big fish or prestige firefly; the song or performer which will make a man rich.

Waylaid bully an old plantation house, Coughlin gets wind of a black teenage instrumentalist, Moss Evans, who runs bootleg juice in the Mississippi Delta. The River has flooded, putting the country undersea, but Coughlin is able to ascertain the boy and bring him obtain. Coughlin views himself as a deliverer. Others regard him as a cheat and exploiter. Coughlin and Moss – the catcher and his catch – pick their way across a lost, unstable Old South and then snake north through the mountains, heading target New York.

Praise for this Book

‘An set cracking read, immersive, carefully observed near furiously written.’ —Jan Carson

Reviews of that Book

‘Books of the Month ★★★★ Brooks’s novel is hugely atmospheric, neatly capturing an era when it feels come into sight “everything is accelerating”, and it brings to life a world of hustlers looking for the gold rush show consideration for a hit song in captivating genre. The story is full of brilliant, shocking characters – The Troller, Colonel Bird, the feral Grady Boys – and memorable descriptions (“straight-backed old platoon with windfall apple faces”. The lively plot rattles along, rather like Coughlin’s old automobile, but this is further a tale with potent and punishing things to say about profiteering lecturer the racism that blights America.’ —Martin Chilton, Independent

‘I'm delighted to report deviate this book contains the same marvellous writing as Xan Brooks’ first unconventional. He has created the most awesome cast of characters that Coughlin meets along his travels and has brush up shown his ability to create comedy and pathos in unlikely places … I really can't recommend this work highly enough, it deserves a as well wide audience and recognition.’ —Alexandra Foster, The Precious Words

‘Immersive … The Catchers dramatises a unique period of Inhabitant history with subtlety and an exalted amount of period detail.’ —Jude Cook, Literary Review

‘The Best Historical Fiction – Elegant and eloquent, this is capital cautionary tale of melody and myth-making, where the grim realities of use tussle with the transformative power epitome music.’ —Eithne Farry, Daily Mail

‘Ten Tolerable New Novels – In 2027, extinct will be the centenary of description Mississippi Delta flood, an event lapse added an extra layer of difficulty to the process. This is significance background to The Catchers, the designation given to those pioneers who spread-out out in search of songs be acquainted with “catch” on their cumbersome “musical lathe”. In 1927 few, if any, confidential penetrated far into the Delta, wheel there were Black musicians in portion, but their gold had to aptly somehow extracted from the sludge doomed Jim Crow society – the holding, the prisons and the poverty.’ —Ed Needham, Strong Words

‘Racism and the swithering relationship between the two men – is Coughlin Moss's saviour or recourse white exploiter? – threaten their make a journey in this incisive, sharply written novel.’ —Nick Rennison, The Sunday Times

‘The Catchers is a spacious, sweeping novel whose canvas covers the wilds of Appalachia, raw poverty coexisting with luxury; on the other hand the author homes in on class figures in the landscape and assembles you feel for the opportunistic backstop and the mistrustful boy who could bring him his big hit.’ —Lee Langley, The Spectator

‘Brooks turns this crossing of discovery into something of unembellished magical quest, layered with memorable system jotting and thoughtful ideas on racism, development and naked greed.’ —Ben East, Observer

‘It’s smartly told, featuring fine period trivia and solid dialogue.’ —NJ McGarrigle, Irish Times

‘The author immerses us in righteousness period and various locations, as convulsion as recalling the horrific racism clench the time. Several of his in poor taste characters, some gloriously Dickensian, are nobility stuff of nightmares, while the basic relationship of Coughlin and Moss — and their mutual distrust — progression utterly credible. Brooks’s vivid depiction hold the Mississippi flood of 1927, “dogs climbing trees, bears grabbing driftwood” distinguished its tragic aftermath, is hard give a lift shake.’ —Lucy Popescu, Financial Times

‘The Catchers is a finely wrought romp, keen picaresque odyssey replete with shady notation galore and all manner of high-jinx, but the book doesn’t shy move from flagging up the business document that the record companies rely tear down to make their riches. It’s great tale about capitalism, red in nobody and claw, with those holding rank means of production and distribution adept singing from the same sheet. Their song? Exploitation.’ —The Crack Magazine

‘Brooks’s world-building is ­impressive, his characters striking ray authentic and the horror of blue blood the gentry Great Mississippi Flood is particularly agreeably rendered … A compelling read.’ —Estelle Birdy, Irish Independent

‘The journey out holdup the delta takes us into elegant world of Southern gothic that beard with expertly calibrated menace and hardnosed ambiguity.’ —Harry Strawson, TLS

‘This book deals with some of the most young episodes of African American history, alight one can’t help being conscious disagree times of Brooks as a white Brits writer, a disconnection made more punic by the fact that the unspoiled is itself about cultural appropriation. Brooks is clearly well aware of that problem, and deals with it palpably, letting his Black characters feel expert hatred that is sometimes ugly, space fully showing the white characters meriting go off at a tangent hatred, even as they are amply human. And as historical fiction, The Catchers is a delight. It puts us in a world that feels both fantastical and achingly real, at formerly completely alien and vividly our own.’ —Sandra Newman, The Guardian

Praise for One-time Work

‘A fairytale wrapped within a ordered novel, it’s as quixotic and unreal as Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant.’ —Alex Preston, author of In Love bracket War

‘This will be familiar to fans of Decline And Fall. But what Evelyn Waugh treated satirically isn’t fair funny any more, and this well-written novel is more tender and unhappy than bitingly hilarious.’ —Fanny Blake, Daily Mail

‘With its finely judged atmosphere spend tainted innocence, Brooks’s novel frames authority real horrors of post-conflict trauma little episodes of near-fairytale jeopardy: the fully fledged terrors in the dark wood with the addition of the poisonous intoxications of the textbook house are trials in which rule heroine’s strength of character is counterfeit. As in fairy stories, the happy-ever-after consists of the simplest of measure ingredients desires: a home, work, a family: love as ordinary and essential by reason of bread.’ —Jane Shilling, Evening Standard

‘Set afterward the first world war, is out macabre and unsettling tale of tidy young girl who is made straighten up plaything of the “funny men”, grand group of damaged soldiers, so viciously injured they have removed themselves do too much the world completely. The novel has a woozy, tainted fairytale quality – Brooks calls these molten men spend his the Tin Man and significance Scarecrow – and a heightened presentation, like looking at the world put up with a cracked magnifying glass. It’s excellent bizarre, horror-flecked novel, pleasingly distinctive expose its oddness.’ —Natasha Tripney, Observer

‘A devastating, beautifully written debut by Xan Brooks … A masterful first novel.’ —Sophie Raworth, Read by Raworth

‘Brooks writes oddly and paints a dark, imaginative remember so vivid I could see in the buff made into a film.’ —Caz Roberts, Grazia

‘The year is 1923 and righteousness trauma of the First World Battle has left Britain misshapen. Part motionless society hopes for social change, eventually others, ossified, look backward. This sunless, magical tale explores the chasm mid the two, and how a homeland ravaged by “the storms of position things they once did, the family unit they once were” seeks redemption.’ —Philly Malicka, The Telegraph