CB Editions (2020)
PP. 208
RRP £10.00
Broken Consort
Broken Consort: Essays, reviews, and other writings
Book of the Year in the Times Literary Supplement
Broken Consort is a chronicle of close attention (to books, films, plays, paintings, music, notebooks and car-boot sales) which will confound anyone who thinks rigour and generosity are contradictory. It includes an account of the evolution of the author’s Wellcome Prize-winning novel Murmur, an essay on Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year, and practical reflections on the business of writing.
“‘At the heart of writing is curiosity,’ writes Will Eaves in his essay on “Making Books”. Curiosity may fuel every writer’s heart, but very often it’s coffee that powers the writer’s mind. When all the coffee runs out, we will be even more grateful for Will Eaves and his essays – each one a shot of artistic adrenalin and a euphoric psychostimulant.”
– Nancy Campbell, author of The Library of Ice“The unity of the collection reflects [Eaves’] approach: erudite without being academic, politically engaged without being polemical, iconoclastic without being dismissive, introspective without being self-absorbed . . . Every page of Broken Consort contains some expression of sympathy – with the nuances of texts, the mysteries of consciousness, the power of ideas; and for the dead, the suffering, the disenfranchised, the misaligned.”
– Oscar Mardell, 3:AM Magazine
To read “Journal of the Plague Year” from Broken Consort, either link to the article online: https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/daniel-defoes-journal-of-a-plague-year-essay-will-eaves/ or read the blogpost here.