on writing | Bookshelf Fantasies

Welcome to Shelf Control — an original feature created and hosted by Bookshelf Fantasies.

Shelf Control is a weekly celebration of the unread books on our shelves. Pick a book you own but haven’t read, write a post about it (suggestions: include what it’s about, why you want to read it, and when you got it), and link up! For more info on what Shelf Control is all about, check out my introductory post, here.

Want to join in? Shelf Control posts go up every Wednesday. See the guidelines at the bottom of the post, and jump on board!

Title: Bleaker House
Author: Nell Stevens
Published: 2017
Length: 256 pages

What it’s about (synopsis via Goodreads):

On a frozen island in the Falklands, with only penguins for company, a young would-be writer struggles to craft a debut novel…and instead writes a funny, clever, moving memoir that heralds the arrival of a fresh new literary talent.

Twenty-seven-year-old Nell Stevens was determined to write a novel, but somehow life kept getting in the way. Then came an irresistible opportunity: she won a fellowship to spend three months, all expenses paid, anywhere in the world to research and write a book. Did she choose a glittering metropolis, a romantic village, an exotic paradise? Um, no. Nell chose Bleaker Island, a snowy, windswept pile of rock off the Falklands. There, in a guesthouse where she would be the only guest, she imagined she could finally rid herself of distractions and write her 2,500 words a day. In three months, surely she’d have a novel, right?

It’s true that there aren’t many distractions on Bleaker, other than sheep, penguins, paranoia and the weather. But as Nell gets to work on her novel–a delightful Dickensian fiction she calls Bleaker House–she discovers that an excruciatingly erratic Internet connection and 1100 calories a day (as much food as she could carry in her suitcase, budgeted to the raisin) are far from ideal conditions for literary production. With deft humour, this memoir traces Nell’s island days and slowly reveals details of the life and people she has left behind in pursuit of her art. They pop up in her novel, as well, as memoir and novel start to reflect one another. It seems that there is nowhere Nell can run–neither a remote island nor the pages of her notebook–to escape herself.

A whimsical, entertaining, thought-provoking blend of memoir and travelogue, laced with tongue-in-cheek writing advice, Bleaker House brilliantly captures the hopes, fears, self-torture and humour of being young and yearning to make a creative life. With winning honesty and wit, Nell’s race to finish her book emerges as a fascinating narrative in its own right.

How and when I got it:

I bought it a year or so ago.

Why I want to read it:

I really don’t remember how I stumbled across this book, but it sounded so quirky and charming that I just had to have it. I’m not necessarily a fan of reading about the writing process, but the idea of being so isolated in such a strange location really piqued my interest.

What do you think? Would you read this book?

Please share your thoughts!

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