August
Gerard Woodward
  • Published: 2 September 2002
  • ISBN: 9780099286929
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $40.00

August

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A stunning and unforgettable first novel from an award-winning poet.

Ever since Aldous Jones careened over the handlebars of his bicycle in 1955 and landed next to Farmer Evans's first field, it has become a tradition for him to take his family camping in Wales. Aldous has started to feel that a certain symbiosis has developed between their North London home and the Welsh village that they only ever see in August. As the years pass, Aldous's family idyll starts to disintegrate and the farm becomes a place drenched in memory.
  • Published: 2 September 2002
  • ISBN: 9780099286929
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $40.00
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About the author

Gerard Woodward

Gerard is the author of an acclaimed sequence of novels, August (shortlisted for the 2001 Whitbread First Novel Award), I'll Go to Bed at Noon (shortlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize) and A Curious Earth. He was born in London in 1961, and published several prize-winning collections of poetry before turning to fiction. His latest collection of poetry, We Were Pedestrians was shortlisted for the 2005 T.S.Eliot Prize. He is Lecturer in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and lives in Bath with his family.

Also by Gerard Woodward

Caravan Thieves
A Curious Earth
I'll Go To Bed At Noon
Island To Island
See all

Praise for August

A striking and impressive work...one of the most original novels of the year

Observer

Simply one of the finest books about the pains and joys of family that I have ever read. The life of the Jones family glows like a barley-sugar window

Time Out

A brilliantly written first novel... Spirit of time and place is lovingly remembered, steeped in nostalgia yet never sentimental... This is a novelist at work, glorifying in the old-fashioned virtues of plot and character...rendered in graceful prose that is beguiling and charming

Mail on Sunday

Full of enjoyably acute social observation, August offers an absorbing account of a now vanished era of English life... Beguiling

The Times

Gerard Woodward's first novel is founded on the brilliantly simple premise of portraying a family and its inexorable implosion through a succession of August camping holidays... A strong narrative, powered by cunningly withheld information and the threat of crisis

Independent