Bøker av Jonathan Buckley

On losing her father, Teresa returns to a small town on the Greek coast - the same place she visited when grieving her mother nine years ago. She immerses herself again in the life of the town, observing the inhabitants going about their business, a quiet backdrop for her reckoning with herself. An episode from her first visit resurfaces vividly - her encounter with John, a man struggling to come to terms with the violent death of his nephew. Soon Teresa encounters some of the people she met last time around: Petros, an eccentric mechanic, whose life story may or may not be part of John's; the beautiful Niko, a diving instructor; and Xanthe, a waitress in one of the cafés on the leafy town square. They talk about their longings, regrets, the passing of time, their sense of who they are. Artfully constructed, absorbing and insightful, One Boat is a brilliant novel grappling with questions of identity, free will, guilt and responsibility.

A novel of intense, flickering intelligence, Tell is structured as a series of interviews with a woman who worked as a gardener for a wealthy businessman and art collector who has mysteriously disappeared, and may or may not have committed suicide. What might be a gloomy subject is instead alluring, lit from within by a lively deep knowledge of human nature: Buckley's eye for motivations brings to mind a Thomas Hardy for our atomized 21st-century. A thrilling novel of strange, intoxicating immediacy, Tell carries the pleasures of exciting new gossip enjoyed with a rare old cognac by a crackling fire. Calling his work "captivating," John Banville has asked: "Why isn't Jonathan Buckley better known?"

The small Tuscan town of Castelluccio is preparing for its annual festival, a spectacular pageant in which a leading role will be taken by the self-exiled English painter Gideon Westfall. A man proudly out of step with modernity, Westfall is regarded by some as a maestro, but in Castelluccio - as in the wider art world - he has his enemies, and his niece - just arrived from England - is no great admirer either. At the same time a local girl is missing, a disappearance that seems to implicate the artist. But the life and art of Gideon Westfall form just one strand of Nostalgia, a novel that teems with incidents and characters, from religious visionaries to folk heroes. Constantly shifting between the panoramic and the intimate, between the past and the present, Nostalgia is as intricately structured as a symphony, interweaving the narratives of history, legend, architecture - and much more - in a kaleidoscope of facts and invention.

Daniel Brennan, approaching the premature end of his life, retreats to a room in his brother's suburban house. To divert himself and to entertain Ellen, his carer, he writes the journal that is Telescope, blurring truth, gossip and fiction in vignettes of his own life and the lives of those close to him. Above all he focuses on his siblings: mercurial Celia, whose life as a teacher in Italy seems to have run aground, and kindly Charlie, the entrepreneur of the family. Enriched with remarkable observations on topics ranging from tattoos and Tokyo street fashion to early French photography, Telescope is a startlingly original and moving book, a glimpse of the world as seen by a connoisseur of vicarious experience. Jonathan Buckley's first five novels were published by Fourth Estate; his sixth by Sort of Books: The Biography of Thomas Lang (1997) Xerxes (1999) Ghost MacIndoe (2001) Invisible (2004) So He Takes the Dog (2006) Contact (2010)

"e;Buckley is a mighty creative force."e; The Sunday Times "e;Jonathan Buckley's intensely compassionate, astoundingly observed novels unfold with exquisite power, and The river is the river is perhaps his most perfectly written book yet. The surprise of its haunting ending makes other plot twists look like childish games."e; James McConnachie, Editor The Author "e;A quietly brilliant writer, almost eccentric in his craftsmanship."e; The Sunday Times A dazzlingly inventive novel that explores the whole nature of storytelling and writing. A woman called Naomi arrives at her sister's house, intending, it seems, to say goodbye. She is abandoning her city life for a remote Scottish retreat, which she will share with a man named Bernat, whom she considers some kind of visionary. In a sequence of stories filtered through multiple retellings, she illuminates the character of this elusive individual. One story seems of special significance: about Afonso, an Amazon boatman, who could be the last speaker of his mother tongue, a language of apparently unique simplicity and precision. Bernat and Naomi are not, however, the only storytellers here. Naomi's sister, Kate, is herself working on a novel that begins as a ghost story, but ends up as something rather different: The river is the river.

Dominic Pattison's life is one of level contentment. His marriage has proved happy and durable; his business is successful. And then Sam Williams, builder and ex-squaddie, enters his life. Sam claims to be his son. Yet is Sam who he says he is? After almost thirty years, Dominic can remember little of his affair with Sam's mother. His instinct is to recoil from this volatile and perhaps dangerous stranger. Sam, however, refuses to be dismissed. With its deft switches of sympathy between menaced 'father' and rebuffed 'son', Buckley's novel is both a thriller and a subtle exploration of the intricacies of memory. Jonathan Buckley's first five novels were published by Fourth Estate; The Biography of Thomas Lang (1997) Xerxes (1999) Ghost MacIndoe (2001) Invisible (2004) So He Takes the Dog (2006) Hi latest novel Telescope is also published by Sort of Books (2011)

A lyrical and beautifully realised novel about a blind man's experiences of the world around him, from the acclaimed author of Ghost MacIndoe.Edward Morton, a blind translator, arrives at the Oak, an ailing spa hotel in the west of England, intending to stay for a few days to visit his family and to work. The manager of the Oak, Malcolm Caldecott, is preparing for the closure of the hotel, and for the visit of Stephanie, the daughter he has not seen for eight years. Eloni Dobra, a chambermaid at the Oak, is striving to establish a life in England, and to free herself of a burden that is crucial to her relationship both with her employer and with Edward Morton. As the nature of that burden becomes clearer, each of these four protagonists and the absent fifth - Morton's lover - move towards a crisis and, like the Oak itself, towards an uncertain future.Spanning the last three weeks of the Oak's existence, Invisible explores multiple voices - voices in conversation, voices in writing, on tape, in memory. It's an investigation of our perception of the world and our place in it, of the pleasures and deceptions of the senses, of the uses of language, of the lure of nostalgia and the difficulties of living in the present.Above all, like Buckley's previous novel, Ghost MacIndoe, it's a lyrical celebration of the transient, and an original study of love.