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    He Wants
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    He Wants
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    He Wants
    Ebook175 pages2 hours

    He Wants

    By Alison Moore

    4.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Observer Book of the Year 2014

    Lewis Sullivan, an RE teacher at a secondary school, was approaching retirement when he wondered for the first time whether he ought to have chosen a more dramatic career. He lives in a village in the Midlands, less than a mile from the house in which he grew up. He always imagined living by the sea. His grown-up daughter visits every day, bringing soup. He does not want soup. He frequents his second-favourite pub, where he can get half a shandy, a speciality sausage and a bit of company.

    But when a childhood friend appears on the scene, Lewis finds his life and comfortable routine shaken up.

    In Moore’s inimitable, haunting style, this seemingly simple but in fact multi-layered narrative unfolds with compelling assurance. Moving between Lewis’s current life of cosy habit, his memories of childhood, and his aged father agitating away in a nursing home, plot twists thicken and weave with stealthily increasing tension. Always unexpected, sparely written and beautifully crafted, He Wants deftly dissects the themes of loneliness, anxiety, the weight of recollection and the complex nature of friendship and family ties. A surprising, lingering and intensely moving tale which reflects the prodigious talent of one of our most exciting novelists.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSalt
    Release dateAug 15, 2014
    ISBN9781844719884
    Unavailable
    He Wants
    Author

    Alison Moore

    Alison Moore was one of our Judges for the Solstice Shorts Short Story Competition, and her story for the Anthology is A Month of Sundays. Alison is a novelist and short story writer. Her first novel, The Lighthouse, won the McKitterick Prize 2013 and was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012 and the National Book Awards 2012 (New Writer of the Year). Her second novel, He Wants, will be published on 15 August. Her debut collection, The Pre-War House and Other Stories, includes a prize-winning novella and stories published in Best British Short Stories anthologies and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra.

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    Reviews for He Wants

    4.5/5

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    • 4/5
      I liked this book, but a story about an older man with a parent in a nursing home is pretty sure to get my interest. I think I particularly relate to the main character's reflections on his childhood experiences. Nearly all the major characters in this novel are men - perhaps unusual for a female author - but I think Moore has a good understanding of what a man's life is like. Perhaps she knows one or more men well. The book encouraged me to reflect on my own life, past and present - and future too. That makes it a worthwhile read for me.
    • 5/5
      He does sleep through earthquakes. There was one recently, with a magnitude of three, right where he lives but he was unaware of it until he read about it in the paper in due course. He would like to experience an earthquake, to feel the ground shaking beneath him, to feel the bed trembling, all the ornaments rattling like something out of an exorcism. Lewis, a 70 year old retired Religious Education teacher, does sleep through earthquakes. As he sleeps through so many other things that could have changed the course of his life. He aches for Beef Wellington, but ends up eating his daughters cold soup. He dreams of flying to Australia, but he never travels anywhere. And then there’s a denial of even deeper desires.But then he meets his old schoolfriend Sydney - a whimsical, rather mysterious character with his yellow Saab and Golden Retriever - and Lewis starts to wake up. Desire, regret, fear - all of these primal emotions is in play in this well-crafted, suspenseful novel - that also contains a lot of dry humor. You can just feel that a lot of thought have gone into every element, every sentence of this story. Like the many references to yellow and gold - suggesting something wild, colorful and dramatic set against the mundane and drab lonely life of Lewis. One thing we now have to expect from Moore is the surprising endings. In “The Lighthouse” it was brutal - in this one it felt surreal, dreamlike. I flipped back and reread bits of several chapters and there’s clues along the way. That is brilliant writing.I also like the dry humor. Like the repeated references to Goldschläger, the Swiss liqueur with bits of gold in it….an exotic and mysterious drink.”Have you ever had it”, asks Lewis, taking a sip of his shandy.“No”, she says.Lewis shakes his head. What kind of a man, he thinks, walks around asking for Swiss liqueurs with bits of gold in? He stands at the bar with his drink, thinking about the things he’s never had and never will.hmmm…I might try to order a Goldschläger today.
    • 5/5
      "He always imagined living by the sea, perhaps in his retirement. But he is seventy years old now, retired years ago, and still living in this village in the Midlands, less than a mile from the house which grew up and around the corner from the school in which he has spent the best part of his life." (62)Lewis Sullivan is seventy, widowed, and a retired Religious Studies teacher. He lives a mile from his childhood home. Ruth, his adult daughter, visits every day, bringing him soup he doesn’t want; and he spend his evenings at his second-favourite pub. But his comfortable routine is shaken up when his old school chum, Sydney Flynn – a ruffian ex-convict who now writes romance novels under a pseudonym – turns up. The aptly named He Wants contemplates desire – so many of which, for Lewis, have been thwarted by the passing of time and by age. He resignedly recalls his life’s desires, which now appear as missed opportunities – or the result of his decisions to settle for safer choices – or perhaps both. But the novel is much more than this, too. Lewis’ reminiscences are combined with astute observances about the idiosyncrasies and impersonality of our modern world: we smoke electronic cigarettes, digitally announce our arrival to the doctor’s office, while we sit for photographs in which we are no longer allowed to smile. In fact, socially speaking, we have almost perfected complete alienation from one another: "Lewis remembers how the mobile library tipped very slightly towards you as you entered, when you put your weight on the steps, and how it swayed underfoot while you were browsing … In the town library now, you don't take your books to the lady behind the desk, you put them into an opening in a big black machine that scans them. You can leave without speaking to a soul." (17)Written in the same spare and effortless prose as The Lighthouse, Moore has followed up with a most worthy read in He Wants – quiet and entertaining and entirely thought-provoking. I am reminded of Gerbrand Bakker and Per Pettersen, whose work I also love. Highly, highly recommended.