Nell Dunn – författare

THE BESTSELLING NOVEL BY NELL DUNN''Her art is ignited by voice . . . as you hear it, is unquestionable'' ALI SMITH, GUARDIAN ''Touching, truthful and fresh'' MARGARET DRABBLE ''Nell Dunn''s hilarious, heartbreaking Poor Cow, about a single mother in sixties London'' PARIS REVIEW Joy - also called Blossom, Sunshine and Blondie by the men in her life - walks down Fulham Broadway carrying her week-old baby, Jonny. She is twenty-one with bleached hair, high suede shoes and a head full of dreams. Her husband Tom is a thief and on the proceeds of a job they move to a luxury flat - ''the world was our oyster and we chose Ruislip''. Then Tom is sent to prison, leaving Joy and Jonny to move in with Auntie Emm. This is Joy''s story: an exuberant, pink-lipsticked, tale of London life, love and young motherhood in the sixties . . . Poor Cow explores the life of a young working-class girl in the swinging sixties as she navigates the consequences of her decisions. Nell Dunn''s 1967 novel was also made into a film directed by Ken Loach.

WINNER OF THE JOHN LLEWELLYN RHYS MEMORIAL PRIZE ''Her art is ignited by voice, as you hear it, is unquestionable'' ALI SMITH, GUARDIAN ''Distinctive, pared-down style'' DAVID EVANS, INDEPENDENT ''Unflinching look at the lives of working-class women'' DAILY MAIL Nell Dunn''s scenes of London life, as it was lived in the early Sixties in the industrial slums of Battersea, have few parallels in contemporary writing. The exuberant, uninhibited, disparate world she found in the tired old streets and under the railway arches is recaptured in these closely linked sketches; and the result is pure alchemy. In this novel, we witness clip-joint hustles, petty thieving, candid sexual encounters, casual birth and casual death. She has a superb gift for capturing colloquial speech and the characters observed in these pages convey that caustic, ironic, and compassionate feeling for life, in which a turn of phrase frequently contains startling flashes of poetry. Battersea, that teeming wasteland of brick south of the Thames, has found its poet in Nell Dunn and Up the Junction is her touchingly truthful and timeless testimonial to it.

Nobody writes like Nell Dunn... always communally, with rare honesty, with love, and with calm and ground-breaking understanding... It''s glorious. Ali Smith The Muse is all it could be; an act of sharing that goes beyond particular experience to take us to a happy realm of natural sisterhood. TLSNell Dunn has perfect pitch for the words we use and for the loves and mysteries of the human heart. Carmen Callil Defiant, funny and exhilarating. The Muse is so high-spirited and full of a sense of adventure. Margaret DrabbleThis slim volume is entertaining... You long to know more about Nell''s lifeDaily MailThe Muse is the story of a life-changing friendship. It starts with Nell''s account of a chance meeting with Josie at the age of 22.Josie teaches her how to live for moment, how to have adventures and find the sweetness of life even in hardship. This was the Sixties, a time of literary and sexual experimentation, of the breakdown of old barriers and inhibitions Even as she was hooking up with dodgy men, Josie always carried herself like a star, and as the inspiration for the ground-breaking novel of working class women Poor Cow and the play Steaming - both of which were made into movies - she became one, feted by producers on Broadway.Life is the thing, was Josie''s motto. But where would her philosophy of taking no care for tomorrow lead her?In prose of unique clarity and simplicity that always gets straight to the heart of matter, The Muse follows this friendship over the decades.