Sarah Hall

'Extraordinary.' Sarah Perry 'A masterpiece.' Daisy Johnson 'A dark and brilliant novel about love, art and fragility in a time of crisis.' Sarah Moss 'Wonderful . . . The writing goes down smoking hot onto the page.' Andrew Miller You were the last one here before I closed the door of Burntcoat, before we all shut our doors. In the bedroom above her immense studio at Burntcoat, the celebrated sculptor Edith Harkness is making her final preparations. The symptoms are well known: her life will draw to an end in the coming days. Downstairs, the studio is a crucible glowing with memories and desire. It was here, when the first lockdown came, that she brought Halit. The lover she barely knew. A presence from another culture. A doorway into a new and feverish world.

Burntcoat

ayoni

I'm the wood in the fire. I've experienced, altered in nature. I am burnt, damaged, more resilient. A life is a bead of water on the black surface, so frail, so strong, its world incredibly held.

It’s all art, even thought, everything is. What we make is made of not only the self but a thousand other naive or rarefied versions. I was left with my hands, my impulses.

The world exists through recreation, how it is perceived. You were a tear in all that, a gift of sudden truth. Because of you I could say, with certainty, I believe in it, all. 

Burntcoat quotes

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