Tree-climbing students, volunteering soldiers, island-bound recluses... The characters in David Constantines remarkable collection are united by an urge to absent themselves, to abscond from the intolerable pressures of normal life and withdraw into strange ideas, political causes, even private languages. Viewed from without, they appear sometimes absurd like the vicar who starts conversing with the Devil when his wife leaves him sometimes tragic like the vision of a suicide being fished out of the River Irwell. Such is the force of Constantines compassion, however, we cannot help but follow each character deep into their isolation. And the further we descend, through the strata of each personal history, the ever-changing landscapes that bear down upon them, the more remarkable the discovery, at very bottom, that glimmers of redemption abide; like the babbling springs uncovered in the scars of a quarry that will one day heal it with a lake, or the secret haven of the title story, offering more than physical refuge, but a safe-house for dreams.
Arvustused
Perhaps the finest of contemporary writers in this form The Reader; 'So good I'll be surprised if there's a better collection this year...' The Independent; 'A collection of edgy, magical stories' The Guardian
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Short-listed for Edge Hill Prize for the Short Story 2010.
Born in Salford, David Constantine has published several volumes of poetry with Bloodaxe (including Collected Poems (2004), Nine Fathom Deep (2009), Elder (2014) and Belongings (2020)), as well as two novels (most recently The Life-Writer with Comma) and five collections of short fiction: Back at the Spike (1994), the highly acclaimed Under the Dam (Comma, 2005), The Shieling (Comma, 2009), Tea at the Midland (Comma, 2012), which won the Frank OConnor International Short Story Award in 2013, and The Dressing-Up Box (Comma, 2019), as well as In Another County: Selected Stories (Comma 2015). Davids story Tea at the Midland won the 2010 National Short Story Award, and his story In Another Country was adapted into 45 Years an Oscar-nominated film, directed by Andrew Haigh and starring Tom Courtenay and Charlotte Rampling. With his wife Helen, David edited Modern Poetry in Translation for many years. He is also translator of Hölderlin, Brecht, Goethe, Kleist, Michaux and Jaccottet. He is the winner of the Queen's Medal for Poetry 2020. He lives in Oxford.
