The BURIED Book Club discussion

Found in Francis Booth's Among Those Left about UK avant-garde. Published her first novel at 22 with Calder and Boyars, followed by four others, before turning fully to poetry. Married to (and collaborated on novels with) Peter Redgrove, also a buried experimentalist.

Fiction:

All the Usual Hours of Sleeping. Calder & Boyars. 1969.
Jesusa (novella). Granite Press. 1971.
Wailing Monkey Embracing a Tree. Calder & Boyars. 1973.
Rainsplitter in the Zodiac Garden. Marion Boyars. 1977.
The Mirror of the Giant. Marion Boyars. 1980.

Peter Redgrove's work is readily available. His Collected Poems is published by Jonathan Cape. There is also a fascinating biography of him which reveals, among many other dubious facets of the man, how appallingly he behaved towards Penelope Shuttle A Lucid Dreamer: The Life of Peter Redgrove.

Penelope Shuttle has had a lot of books of poetry published by Bloodaxe Books. She also co-wrote, with Redgrove, the decidedly strange book The Wise Wound: Menstruation and Everywoman.

Thanks, Declan - I had assumed Redgrove was buried as I couldn't find many of his novels in print. Have you read anything by either?

I've read some of Redgrove's poetry and sections of the biography. He was a 'troubled' man, but horrible in the way he behaved towards women; the sort who regarded wife-beating as "an act of love". He had quite a strange sexual proclivity too - 'The Game', as he called it - which involved the overwhelming need to roll around in mud to attain readiness to engage with a partner, something he was ashamed of, but which Penelope Shuttle was prepared to allow.

Intriguing titles, but I can't find a word on her actual prose fiction.

There are some extracts from reviews of 'Wailing Monkey Embracing a Tree' here: http://www.enotes.com/topics/penelope... .

It's amazing what you find when you go looking. I didn't known that there was a recording of an interview with Penelope Shuttle and my late brother Dennis available here: http://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.... .

Capsule review of Wailing Monkey by me here. Not my usual teacup prose- or content-wise, but her talent for building beautiful word-sculptures and using archaic adjectives indiscriminately made me salivate.

Excellent, she continues to hover around my watch list!

Shuttle's four novels have been reissued by VPress in The Penelope Shuttle Omnibus.

Man, you guys are rocking my world. Quick question - do you get more of the money if I order direct from your site (shipping to the UK)?

Our pleasure. Direct from our site for maximum payback.

Well expect to receive an order soon then...

Oh and btw, you guys should look into getting Tea with Mrs. Goodman back into print...

I read two of Penelope Shuttle's novels recently (three if I include the novel The Terrors of Dr. Treviles, which she collaborated on with her spouse Peter Redgrove).

The first I read was her first novel All the Usual Hours of Sleeping, which revolves around a man and the two women competing for his romantic attention. For a rivalrous love triangle, this one is kind of unique in its details (though one must be patient for that to be revealed) and Shuttle's command of figurative language greatly enhances what could to some readers be a rather banal storyline.

The second one I read was Shuttle's third novel, Rainsplitter in the Zodiac Garden. Here, Shuttle's poetic language is even more impressive as once again she approaches similar thematic ground, now also expanding into unwanted pregnancy. This time, however, the narrative is even more experimental, reminding me of Anna Kavan's Sleep Has His House. As in her first novel she persistently switches point-of-view, but distorts the narrative order of events even more, basically annihilating any semblance of linear time amidst a forest of oneiric imagery.

I need to finally read Rainspitter. It's been next to my bed for a while.

It' s a good late-night book.