SPRING
The U.S. debut of leading U.K. author David Szalay, named one of The Daily Telegraph’s twenty best British novelists under forty.
James is a man with a checkered past—sporadic entrepreneur, one-time film producer, almost a dot-com millionaire—now alone in a flat in Bloomsbury, running a shady horse-racing-tips operation. Katherine is a manager at a luxury hotel, a job she’d intended to leave years ago, and is separated from her husband. The novel unfolds in 2006, at the end of the money-for-nothing years, as a chance meeting leads to an awkward tryst and James tries to make sense of a relationship where “no”
The U.S. debut of leading U.K. author David Szalay, named one of The Daily Telegraph’s twenty best British novelists under forty.
James is a man with a checkered past—sporadic entrepreneur, one-time film producer, almost a dot-com millionaire—now alone in a flat in Bloomsbury, running a shady horse-racing-tips operation. Katherine is a manager at a luxury hotel, a job she’d intended to leave years ago, and is separated from her husband. The novel unfolds in 2006, at the end of the money-for-nothing years, as a chance meeting leads to an awkward tryst and James tries to make sense of a relationship where “no” means “maybe” and a “yes” can never be taken for granted.
David Szalay builds a novel of immense resonance as he cycles though perspectives that add layers of depth to the hesitations, missteps, and tensions as James tries to win Katherine. James’s other pursuit is money, and Spring follows his investments and schemes, from a half share in a thoroughbred to a suit-and-tie day job he’s taken to pay the bills. Spring is a sharply tuned novel so nuanced and precise in its psychology that it establishes Szalay as a major talent.
- Graywolf Press
- Paperback
- January 2012
- 272 Pages
- 9781555976026
Buy the Book
$15.00
About David Szalay
David Szalay was born in Canada in 1974. His first novel, London and the South-East, won the Betty Trask Prize and the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. His second novel, The Innocent, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2009. He lives in London.
Praise
“[Szalay’s] third novel, Spring, confirms that he is a writer with the whole range of talents.”—The Sunday Times
“[Szalay has] a texture of truthfulness quite unlike that of any other fiction about London that I know . . . A very beautifully poised novel.”—Evening Standard
“Szalay’s insights into the perspectives of both sexes illuminate the complexity and fragility of romanticcoupling. His knowing eye and exacting prose . . . bring perspicacity to the complications of love.”—Publishers Weekly
“[A] nuanced and bracingly intelligent dissection of contemporary London life. . . . Szalay provides a sharp and occasionally humorous portrait not only of [James and Katherine] but of the mores of 21st-century romance among those for whom romance has had its old glamour grubbed up a bit by age, world-weariness and the demands of everyday life. Subtle in its psychology, elegantly written, with lively and amusing minor characters—an impressive novel.”—Kirkus Reviews