Articoli correlati a Idioglossia
Idioglossia: n. the secret language between two people, the babble of babies, the murmur of lunatics.
Eleanor Bailey – hailed in the UK as a female John Irving – proves herself an accomplished and witty storyteller in her debut novel, Idioglossia. Exploring the lives of four generations of women, Bailey depicts mothers and daughters in a book that adroitly combines a sharp satiric edge with epic, even comic reach. Bailey’s wit and uncanny characterizations show how these variously disturbed women come to understand each other through their individual experiences of depression.
At the head of the lineage is Great Edie, a scary, cantankerous old woman and an inspired seer, who runs a gloomy boarding house in London. Her daughter, Grace, suffers the most extremely from the family illness. A schizophrenic, she spends most of her adult life locked away in a mental institution, recalling a dead sister whom she believes she killed, and babbling what seems like nonsense to her patient but condescending nurses.
Grace’s only daughter, Maggie, left to grow up on a cruise ship in the care of her drunken ventriloquist father, is a bright, idiosyncratic Alice-in-Wonderland type. Lost, wide-eyed and cast adrift amid a group of eclectic performers from the ship’s nightly cabaret, Maggie retreats into her own games and inventions until a mysterious entertainer comes on board. Twice her age, he has the wit to play her games and, because of his attentions, Maggie finds herself falling in love. He stays involved as long as she can provide him with access to her imaginative childlike world, but when that ends, he disappears, leaving her pregnant and alone. Thirty years later, he returns to her, by then an old man.
Frozen solid with despair, Maggie passes the years at the mercy of Great Edie’s cruel tongue. Her only vision of heaven is the thought of being left alone in a quiet room. At times she envies Grace her strange freedom, her complete surrender to the psychological weakness that runs through their family like a fault. Sarah, Maggie’s daughter doesn’t much like or understand her mother. On the run from a childhood peopled by “loveless adults,” Sarah uses deadening temp jobs and increasingly depressing one-night stands to distance herself from the world and get revenge on her mother. She tries to find solace with her anti-social computer-geek friend Alex, whose sophisticated games seem to be a means of escape for them both. But even after she moves in with him, she finds herself edging closer to her own breaking point, eventually seeing no alternative to just letting go. At last it’s up to Maggie to rescue her daughter from spiralling into the family madness.
Idioglossia is a rich and powerful book, full of insights about mothers, daughters, and the temptation to break from the harsh reality of the world. Its publication marks the arrival of a writer of great imagination and heart.
Eleanor Bailey – hailed in the UK as a female John Irving – proves herself an accomplished and witty storyteller in her debut novel, Idioglossia. Exploring the lives of four generations of women, Bailey depicts mothers and daughters in a book that adroitly combines a sharp satiric edge with epic, even comic reach. Bailey’s wit and uncanny characterizations show how these variously disturbed women come to understand each other through their individual experiences of depression.
At the head of the lineage is Great Edie, a scary, cantankerous old woman and an inspired seer, who runs a gloomy boarding house in London. Her daughter, Grace, suffers the most extremely from the family illness. A schizophrenic, she spends most of her adult life locked away in a mental institution, recalling a dead sister whom she believes she killed, and babbling what seems like nonsense to her patient but condescending nurses.
Grace’s only daughter, Maggie, left to grow up on a cruise ship in the care of her drunken ventriloquist father, is a bright, idiosyncratic Alice-in-Wonderland type. Lost, wide-eyed and cast adrift amid a group of eclectic performers from the ship’s nightly cabaret, Maggie retreats into her own games and inventions until a mysterious entertainer comes on board. Twice her age, he has the wit to play her games and, because of his attentions, Maggie finds herself falling in love. He stays involved as long as she can provide him with access to her imaginative childlike world, but when that ends, he disappears, leaving her pregnant and alone. Thirty years later, he returns to her, by then an old man.
Frozen solid with despair, Maggie passes the years at the mercy of Great Edie’s cruel tongue. Her only vision of heaven is the thought of being left alone in a quiet room. At times she envies Grace her strange freedom, her complete surrender to the psychological weakness that runs through their family like a fault. Sarah, Maggie’s daughter doesn’t much like or understand her mother. On the run from a childhood peopled by “loveless adults,” Sarah uses deadening temp jobs and increasingly depressing one-night stands to distance herself from the world and get revenge on her mother. She tries to find solace with her anti-social computer-geek friend Alex, whose sophisticated games seem to be a means of escape for them both. But even after she moves in with him, she finds herself edging closer to her own breaking point, eventually seeing no alternative to just letting go. At last it’s up to Maggie to rescue her daughter from spiralling into the family madness.
Idioglossia is a rich and powerful book, full of insights about mothers, daughters, and the temptation to break from the harsh reality of the world. Its publication marks the arrival of a writer of great imagination and heart.
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Recensione:
“Many thanks for Idioglossia which I greatly enjoyed and admired ... Hugely entertaining ... a clever, dramatic read with a great deal of passion lurking underneath its surface. It successfully attempts to understand the different dynamics of some mother/daughter relationships and isn't afraid to confront the despair and uglinesss that can be there. It crackles with energy and takes flying leaps into the imagination only to land with a thud into the real world” —Margaret Forster
“Eleanor Bailey's exuberant novel plays with the fate of characters struggling with the tension between inner and outer reality. Funny and sad and full of human sympathy.” —Jill Paton Walsh
“A highly original and beautifully written study of the dynamics of mother-daughter relationships through four generations of one family....” —The Sunday Telegraph (U.K)
“[Bailey’s] insights into the intimacy of communication, whether through riddles, games or idioglossia...strengthen this novel. As does her perceptive gleaning that the people in our lives who make the most lasting impression are often those who are missing.” —The Gazette (Montreal)
“At [the novel’s] kind heart are Bailey’s moments of uneasy love, found epiphany, unexpected love.” —Scotland on Sunday
“This is a big, beautiful work...Eleanor Bailey writes remarkably from all these different perspectives, capturing precisely the voices and feelings of her characters. From the insane blatherings of Grace to the abused man with whom Sarah eventually falls in love, Bailey twirls all these worlds together with complete control. There is humour everywhere amid the pain...Bailey’s physical descriptions are perfect...Idioglossia feels as if you’ve stepped into a complete world.” —Michelle Berry, Globe and Mail
"A sparkling tale of four generations of women all haunted by madness...Rich, evocative and involving" —Elle
"This assured debut...[Bailey's] unsentimental but sympathetic language penetrates the private world of the emotions in an impressive way" —The Times
"Relentlessly building beneath an entertaining and well-written story the reader is made aware of the relationships which bind us, not only to our family but one being to another" —Philippa Boston, Daily Mail
"Highly original and beautifully written...flashes of a brilliant imagination and genuine psychological insights" —Tamsin Dean, Sunday Telegraph
"A brilliant accomplished debut...slick and clever, heartfelt and deep...Bailey's observations are startling and fresh...the sort of read which haunts you for weeks afterwards" —Sunday Express
“At its heart, Idioglossia is a novel about language and how words help and hinder us in making connections as human beings. [Eleanor Bailey] digs deeper to discuss the words we use in public as distinct from the words we use with family and friends, the secret codes lovers use, evolving cyber-tongues and computerese, and those unspoken linguistic connections that we make using our bodies.... Idioglossia is at once an intellectual puzzle and a sweeping epic...” —eye
“Clever and moving .... To have got all this disparate material to cohere so well into a sparkly enjoyable whole is a real achievement.” —The Independent
“A huge sprawling work ... a novel determined to be generous. At its kind heart are Bailey’s moments of uneasy love, found epiphany, unexpected love. Weighed against its darkness, losses and severances, this generosity is Idioglossia’s achievement.” —Scotland on Sunday
“Bailey’s characters, who struggle to cope with life, love and loss, desperately latch on to any means of escape. Whether it is madness, mirrors, games or secret languages, Bailey skilfully threads these essential escape mechanisms into the narrative fabric.... But it is her insights into the intimacy of communication, whether through riddles, games or idioglossia that strengthen this novel. As does her perceptive gleaning that the people in our lives who make the most lasting impression are often those who are missing.” — The Gazette (Montreal)
L'autore:
“Eleanor Bailey's exuberant novel plays with the fate of characters struggling with the tension between inner and outer reality. Funny and sad and full of human sympathy.” —Jill Paton Walsh
“A highly original and beautifully written study of the dynamics of mother-daughter relationships through four generations of one family....” —The Sunday Telegraph (U.K)
“[Bailey’s] insights into the intimacy of communication, whether through riddles, games or idioglossia...strengthen this novel. As does her perceptive gleaning that the people in our lives who make the most lasting impression are often those who are missing.” —The Gazette (Montreal)
“At [the novel’s] kind heart are Bailey’s moments of uneasy love, found epiphany, unexpected love.” —Scotland on Sunday
“This is a big, beautiful work...Eleanor Bailey writes remarkably from all these different perspectives, capturing precisely the voices and feelings of her characters. From the insane blatherings of Grace to the abused man with whom Sarah eventually falls in love, Bailey twirls all these worlds together with complete control. There is humour everywhere amid the pain...Bailey’s physical descriptions are perfect...Idioglossia feels as if you’ve stepped into a complete world.” —Michelle Berry, Globe and Mail
"A sparkling tale of four generations of women all haunted by madness...Rich, evocative and involving" —Elle
"This assured debut...[Bailey's] unsentimental but sympathetic language penetrates the private world of the emotions in an impressive way" —The Times
"Relentlessly building beneath an entertaining and well-written story the reader is made aware of the relationships which bind us, not only to our family but one being to another" —Philippa Boston, Daily Mail
"Highly original and beautifully written...flashes of a brilliant imagination and genuine psychological insights" —Tamsin Dean, Sunday Telegraph
"A brilliant accomplished debut...slick and clever, heartfelt and deep...Bailey's observations are startling and fresh...the sort of read which haunts you for weeks afterwards" —Sunday Express
“At its heart, Idioglossia is a novel about language and how words help and hinder us in making connections as human beings. [Eleanor Bailey] digs deeper to discuss the words we use in public as distinct from the words we use with family and friends, the secret codes lovers use, evolving cyber-tongues and computerese, and those unspoken linguistic connections that we make using our bodies.... Idioglossia is at once an intellectual puzzle and a sweeping epic...” —eye
“Clever and moving .... To have got all this disparate material to cohere so well into a sparkly enjoyable whole is a real achievement.” —The Independent
“A huge sprawling work ... a novel determined to be generous. At its kind heart are Bailey’s moments of uneasy love, found epiphany, unexpected love. Weighed against its darkness, losses and severances, this generosity is Idioglossia’s achievement.” —Scotland on Sunday
“Bailey’s characters, who struggle to cope with life, love and loss, desperately latch on to any means of escape. Whether it is madness, mirrors, games or secret languages, Bailey skilfully threads these essential escape mechanisms into the narrative fabric.... But it is her insights into the intimacy of communication, whether through riddles, games or idioglossia that strengthen this novel. As does her perceptive gleaning that the people in our lives who make the most lasting impression are often those who are missing.” — The Gazette (Montreal)
Eleanor Bailey was 29 when Idioglossia was first published. If that seems young, consider that she’s been writing since she was seven. In an interview in the Toronto weekly eye, she joked, “I was a late starter. I didn’t commit to being a novelist until the age of seven – before that I was half thinking of being the owner of a sweet shop. Until I found out this didn’t mean I could eat sweets all day.... Now, at 30, and with friends who still don’t know what they want to do with their lives, I realize how lucky I was to be so sure so early.”
Eleanor (pronounced Eleaner not nor) Bailey grew up in London and received her university degrees there in English and Journalism. She worked for ten years as a journalist before selling Idioglossia to Doubleday in the U.K. At the time, the book was only half-written. Still, Bailey had achieved renown in Britain as a journalist who had written for nearly every major newspaper in the country and who published a weekly column in the Independent on Sunday called “The Life Doctor.” As a journalist, she has also written for Marie Claire and Vogue, and has interviewed everyone from pop stars to porn stars to healers and scientists, and even a “Hong Kong rat expert.”
A dedicated researcher as well as a writer, Bailey has done some “very interesting things” to better understand herself and the world: “I once stayed in an entirely white room for 48 hours with white food, no noise, no clock, to see if it would have, as research suggested, a positive effect on my mental state.”
Reading about the unhinged women in Idioglossia, one might wonder what the author’s family is like. While Bailey maintains that, unlike the characters in her book, she had a very good relationship with her mother, the theme of mental illness, particularly as it can be passed through families, does have its roots in her own history. “Throughout my family there’s almost every kind of mental illness you’d want to mention,” she has said. Yet, she finds the fact that insanity might be passed down through families – just like red hair – “rather comforting.” Madness, she says, is “part of our society, and in some ways a sane reaction to a very insane world.”
When asked in a radio interview whether she felt there was a connection between madness and writing, Bailey admitted that writing the book was “stressful” and that she was on anti-depressants during that process. However, she doesn’t believe that writing is therapeutic in the way that, for instance, therapy is. “It’s like if you go to a therapist and bring out your deep complexes and your inner workings, a good therapist will try to put it all back again at the end, whereas if you write a novel, you bring everything out like that, and afterwards you just go on to something else, and so all your stuff is out there. I think it leaves you a bit weird-feeling.”
Where, then, does happiness or comfort come from? Sometimes from families, which she feels are “the most infuriating and probably the most inspirational thing,” and, unsurprisingly, from books – particularly children’s books. “Children’s books often have lasting relevance to life,” she has commented. “They are so much more black and white than adults’ books. Books you read as a child stay with you forever. I am continually consoled by funny and touching moments from books that I love. In bad times, one relies on them even more.”
What will her next book bring? There is the suggestion that it may not end as happily as the last. With Idioglossia, Bailey felt pressure from her friends – who read the book before anyone else – not to have things turn out too terribly. “I didn’t have the heart to be too mean,” she revealed. “Truman Capote likened finishing a novel to taking your child into the yard and shooting it. It sounds ridiculous, but since you spend more time with these characters than with your real friends and family, you can’t help but get personally involved. But that was last time,” she vows. “In the new novel I plan to be a bit tougher.”
Bailey currently lives in Germany with her husband of five years. She has been inspired enough by the country to set her next novel in Berlin. It appears, however, that she has been taking in the country in a more private sort of way, rather than “frolicking with the natives.” “Conversation is inevitably stumbling, less interesting, more of an effort,” she wrote in a piece for the Guardian. “I spend more time on my own, which I do happily."
Eleanor (pronounced Eleaner not nor) Bailey grew up in London and received her university degrees there in English and Journalism. She worked for ten years as a journalist before selling Idioglossia to Doubleday in the U.K. At the time, the book was only half-written. Still, Bailey had achieved renown in Britain as a journalist who had written for nearly every major newspaper in the country and who published a weekly column in the Independent on Sunday called “The Life Doctor.” As a journalist, she has also written for Marie Claire and Vogue, and has interviewed everyone from pop stars to porn stars to healers and scientists, and even a “Hong Kong rat expert.”
A dedicated researcher as well as a writer, Bailey has done some “very interesting things” to better understand herself and the world: “I once stayed in an entirely white room for 48 hours with white food, no noise, no clock, to see if it would have, as research suggested, a positive effect on my mental state.”
Reading about the unhinged women in Idioglossia, one might wonder what the author’s family is like. While Bailey maintains that, unlike the characters in her book, she had a very good relationship with her mother, the theme of mental illness, particularly as it can be passed through families, does have its roots in her own history. “Throughout my family there’s almost every kind of mental illness you’d want to mention,” she has said. Yet, she finds the fact that insanity might be passed down through families – just like red hair – “rather comforting.” Madness, she says, is “part of our society, and in some ways a sane reaction to a very insane world.”
When asked in a radio interview whether she felt there was a connection between madness and writing, Bailey admitted that writing the book was “stressful” and that she was on anti-depressants during that process. However, she doesn’t believe that writing is therapeutic in the way that, for instance, therapy is. “It’s like if you go to a therapist and bring out your deep complexes and your inner workings, a good therapist will try to put it all back again at the end, whereas if you write a novel, you bring everything out like that, and afterwards you just go on to something else, and so all your stuff is out there. I think it leaves you a bit weird-feeling.”
Where, then, does happiness or comfort come from? Sometimes from families, which she feels are “the most infuriating and probably the most inspirational thing,” and, unsurprisingly, from books – particularly children’s books. “Children’s books often have lasting relevance to life,” she has commented. “They are so much more black and white than adults’ books. Books you read as a child stay with you forever. I am continually consoled by funny and touching moments from books that I love. In bad times, one relies on them even more.”
What will her next book bring? There is the suggestion that it may not end as happily as the last. With Idioglossia, Bailey felt pressure from her friends – who read the book before anyone else – not to have things turn out too terribly. “I didn’t have the heart to be too mean,” she revealed. “Truman Capote likened finishing a novel to taking your child into the yard and shooting it. It sounds ridiculous, but since you spend more time with these characters than with your real friends and family, you can’t help but get personally involved. But that was last time,” she vows. “In the new novel I plan to be a bit tougher.”
Bailey currently lives in Germany with her husband of five years. She has been inspired enough by the country to set her next novel in Berlin. It appears, however, that she has been taking in the country in a more private sort of way, rather than “frolicking with the natives.” “Conversation is inevitably stumbling, less interesting, more of an effort,” she wrote in a piece for the Guardian. “I spend more time on my own, which I do happily."
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- EditoreVintage Canada
- Data di pubblicazione2001
- ISBN 10 0679311254
- ISBN 13 9780679311256
- RilegaturaCopertina flessibile
- Numero di pagine384
- Valutazione libreria
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