Spill Simmer Falter Wither

This book is like a flame in daylight: beautiful and unexpected. It packs a big effect for something that seems so slight, and almost hard to see. -- Anne Enright A stunning and wonderful achievement by a writer touched by greatness. It is the most powerful debut novel I have read in several years . . . An outstanding new Irish novelist. -- Joseph O'Connor Unbearably poignant and beautifully told. -- Eimear McBride, author of A Girl is a Half-formed Thing At the foundations of the novel is the issue of what happens when a community fails those who need it most ... Baume turns the commonplace minutiae of changing seasons, thoughts and people into the remarkable. * Sunday Times * A fascinating portrait of the friendship a man develops with his dog and the companionship he also finds in booksFear curdles through this story, which skilfully builds suspense as it discloses their painful pastsThe lyrical language is most alive when evoking landscapeBaume [has] a gift for inventive use of languageBaume succeeds is reawakening her readers capacity for wonderso much so that the book and its one-eyed dog became companions I was loathe to leave. * Observer * Extraordinary . . . Spill Simmer Falter Wither is a heartbreaking read, and heralds Baume as a major new talent. * Independent on Sunday * So far this year, Ive read 103 books. You can understand why they might be blurring in my mind by now. Eight of them, though, are as distinct to me today as they were while I was reading them, and each for a different reason. For language that sounds like music, theres Sara Baumes Spill Simmer Falter Wither, about a lonely Irish outcast and his one-eyed rescue dog. -- Anne Tyler * New York Times Book Review * Baumes sympathy for her 'wonkety' characters is infectious and their relationship in all its drama and ordinariness beautifully conveyed. Places and smells, plants and animals are conjured with loving attention, the narrative propelled by a striking linguistic intensityBaumes capacity for wonder turns this portrait of an unusual friendship into a powerful meditation on humanity. * New Statesman * Every so often a book comes along that is so perfect it takes your breath away, and leaves your heart hammering with the beauty of the writing and the sadness of the story. Sara Baumes debut, Spill Simmer Falter Wither, is such a book Baumes prose is full of wonder inventive, poetic and dazzling, concerned with the smallest details of the natural landscape and the terrains of human emotion. Absolutely astounding. * Psychologies * A deft and moving debutTo capture this constrained setting and quiet character requires specific skills, which Baume has in spadesIts a claustrophobic, affecting debut and Baume has a rare ability to look afresh at muted scenes and ordinary objectsIts not easy to tell such a sparse tale, to be so economic with story, but the book hums with its own distinctiveness, presenting in singing prose an unforgettable landscape peopled by two unlikely Beckettian wanderers, where hope is not yet lost. * Guardian *

Sara Baume was born in Lancashire and grew up in County Cork, Ireland. She studied fine art and creative writing and her fiction and criticism have been published in anthologies, newspapers and journals such as the Irish Times, the Guardian, The Stinging Fly and Granta magazine. She has won the Davy Byrnes Short Story Award, the Hennessy New Irish Writing Award, the Rooney Prize for Literature, an Irish Book Award for Best Newcomer and the Kate OBrien Award. Her debut novel, Spill Simmer Falter Wither, was shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, the Warwick Prize for Writing and the Desmond Elliott Prize. She has received a Literary Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe, New Mexico. A Line Made by Walking is her second novel. She lives in West Cork.