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Cover of Bleaker House: Chasing My Novel To The End Of The World

Bleaker House: Chasing My Novel To The End Of The World

by Nell Stevens

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"A whimsical blend of memoir and travelogue, laced with wry and indispensable writing advice, Bleaker House is a story of creative struggle that brilliantly captures the self-torture of the writing life. Twenty-seven-year-old Nell Stevens was determined to write a novel, but somehow life kept getting in the way. Then came a game-changing opportunity: she won a fellowship that let her spend three months, all expenses paid, anywhere in the world to research and write a book. Would she choose a glittering metropolis, a romantic village, an exotic paradise? Um, no. Nell chose Bleaker Island, a snowy, windswept pile of rock in the Falklands. There, in a guesthouse where she would be the only guest, she could finally rid herself of distractions and write her 2,500 words a day.…

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"In Bleaker House, Nell Stevens describes her time living almost entirely alone on barren, cold Bleaker Island in the Falklands. Though she was isolated, she reached a curious kind of calm: “Surrounded by people, it is very easy to feel alone. Surrounded by penguins, less so.” There, among the penguins, she found solitude, “the contented twin of loneliness.” Bleaker House is a graceful memoir about how loneliness can sometimes be other people."
NPR Books We Love — 2017 · apps.npr.org