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The book:
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Reviews of The Dying of Delight
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Review on GCN Website
This one first appeared on the GCN website (Gay Community News).
Reviewer: Aine Duffy
If you are looking for something a little out of the way, then I'd recommend this dizzying novel, packed with more twists and turns than the London Underground. Dying of Delight begins with one of the best opening sequences I've encountered; "I was born on the day Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. I grew up the day my mum went to Mars." It continues in a similar vein, striking and poignant at the same time. However, what appears at first to be a fairly conventional comedy-thriller turns out to be a much more complex. No-one is really who they seem, and nothing turns out as expected.
Set in the UK around the time of the 1999 total eclipse of the sun, the novel has two main characters. There's Silver, who quits her job and enters into a spiral of increasingly aberrant behaviour, accompanied by a cast of misfits. And then there's Edna, who appears suddenly by the side of a motorway and is picked up by a couple of activists who bring her to the Nine Ladies protest camp in the Peak District. Sudbery's description of life at the camp is astonishingly gentle, providing a dramatic contrast to the chaotic existence being spun out at Silver's house in Manchester.
I'd not go so far as to describe this as a 'lesbian' novel; the Dying of Delight is too complex a book for such simple categorisation. But it is a strong debut, and for those of us who have indulged in chemical substances, the journey is strangely disturbing. The paranoia, the hallucinations, the waste of time, indeed the sheer stupidity she describes, makes one shake one's head and say 'noooo, never again.' Dying of Delight is a remarkable novel - go on, stretch your horizons and check it out.
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Review in G3 magazine, July '04 issue
This review also appears on the Gay's the Word website - possibly originated from here?
Reading The Dying of Delight is like taking care of a troublesome younger sibling. You like it, accept it but you sometimes wish it could calm down and make more sense.
Clare Sudbery's debut is about Silver and Edna, both different women with a different focus on the solar eclipse of 11th August 1999.
Silver, who after her mother's death gave up her well paid computer job, to live in her mum's house together with her radical and very carefree friends, changes her life yet again at the eclipse.
For Edna, the eclipse is only the beginning of her new more secure life within the community at Nine Ladies. I liked the book and enjoyed it in the end, because it all 'grew up' and made sense, just like that troublesome sibling...
GTW verdict: Fast paced, drug fuelled and with community spirit about women on the verge.
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Review in Student Direct
This first appeared in Student Direct, Manchester University's student paper.
Clare Sudbery’s The Dying of Delight centres on the solar eclipse of 11th August 1999. The book follows the stories of two women, the first being Silver Bergman who is looking forward to the eclipse which marks a period of good luck for her.
She’s just given up her job in IT to join her friends and live the life of an artist. The second is the mysterious figure of Edna, who appears after the solar eclipse and is a real enigma. Whilst the book charts the end of Silver’s story and the beginning of Edna’s, there is also the added mystery of the body that the police have found in the cellar in Manchester.
The novel appears to shift easily between the three storylines with no contrived tools or premises. Sudbery is able to assume the intelligence of her readers and gets it spot on. The book captures the eeriness of the time surrounding the solar eclipse. The writing is modern, intriguing and the narrative immediately grabs your attention. The book has all the skills and interest of a modern novel combined with the mystery of a spiritual tale. Sudbery has managed to blend the supernatural of a children’s story with the maturity of an adult novel to produce a novel that is at once familiar and unnerving.
It’s hard to imagine that all this came out of our very own city. Sudbery lives in inner city Manchester and lends her varied life experience to this book with vigour and energy. This is Sudbery’s first novel and she achieves everything with enthusiasm; it sparkles as a first novel should. The book is a modern thriller; it’s well written and unusual in its content. Readers will find elements of science-fiction, crime novels, thrillers, modern psychological dramas and much more in this multi-genre witty piece.
Hayley Goodwin
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Review and Interview on the Rainbow Network, June 17th 2004
Charlotte Cooper wrote a great review for the Rainbow Network website.
She also interviewed me, and you can find that here.
Clare Sudbery's first novel, The Dying of Delight, is a wild, psychedelic ride into the inner lives of two women, set against the backdrop of the 1999 solar eclipse.
Silver Bergman may be going off the rails somewhat. After leaving a well-paid job, she hooks up with a group of drug-fuelled party lovers and that's when things become seriously unravelled. At the same time she is haunted by memories of her mother, whose own grip on reality was not so hot. As the book unfolds, so does Silver.
But this is a book with two protagonists. Alongside Silver there is Edna, a mysterious woman who gets taken in by a group of people protesting the development of the Nine Ladies, an ancient group of standing stones. Silver and Edna share a connection, which might have something to do with the discovery of a body in a Manchester basement.
A large part of The Dying of Delight is set at the Nine Ladies' protest camp. This is a real place, in the Peak District, and the battle to save it from redevelopment is also one that is happening right now. Sudbery uses this as a plot device to make the characters more real, but also, generously, to draw attention to the plight of the protestors. It works a treat.
The Dying of Delight is not your average lesbian potboiler. There is love within the book, but it's not of the schmaltzy romantic kind. There's an element of thriller about it, but it couldn't be further away from the type investigated by your garden variety lesbian private investigator. There are dykes, but the sexuality is decidedly queer and occasionally ambiguous rather than a clear cut mainstream lesbian kind of thing. This is a book that transcends styles and expectations. Sexuality is a strong part of the story, but it's not the sole hook.
What I like about The Dying of Delight is that it's an experimental piece of work. The fact that it's out on the bookshelves is amazing given these Harry Potter saturated times in which we live. The writing is energetic and unconventional.
It's not an easy book to read, however. Occasionally the prose is jumbled, the word-play is distracting and the over-emphasis on dialogue to move the plot along means that it's easy to get lost. It also suffers from one of my personal bugbears - characters who are not properly introduced. The result is that you'll find yourself flicking back and forth wondering who exactly it was that said what.
Still, it's an interesting trip, and an exciting development in British dyke fiction.
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Review in Diva magazine, July 2004
This edgy tale tells the story of Silver Bergman yesterday, and Edna tomorrow. Silver Bergman is looking forward to the solar eclipse, as a culmination of the six-month period which has seen her give up a lucrative IT career and join her friends in the carefree lifestyle of an artist. Yet on August 11th, everything will change again in her drug-fuelled new life.
For Edna, the eclipse is only the beginning. A mysterious, wraithlike figure, she's a woman without history, living in a community without questions. As their lives gradually unravel, two very different women emerge, as do their respective efforts to escape their pasts and control their futures.
Confused? Don't be. Clare Sudbery has written an engrossing post-chemical generation thriller that resonates whether you're a queer pill-popper or not. Her wry, penetrating observations about a culture that struggles with its dependence on drugs and escapism provide a refreshing framework for the writer's first gutsy novel.
****(4/5)
(Jane Czyzselska/DIVA magazine)
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Review / Interview From City Life magazine (Manchester's answer to Time Out), 26th May - 1st June 2004
The Acid House
Sarah Tierney talks to Clare Sudbery about her drugged-up novel The Dying of Delight.
What's it about?
Levenshulme, lesbians and LSD. Silver leaves her office job to become an artist. Troubled by her mum's suicide and surrounded by drug-guzzling mates, she falls in and out of bed with women and men, and in and out of sanity. Her mum was mad. She thinks she might be too. And with a daily top-up of acid racing around her system, it's not surprising that the cat can talk and that her edgy housemate Andy is her best friend one minute, then out to get her the next.
Surely downing hallucinatory chemicals isn't the best way to cope with impending insanity? Sudbery sums up her character's reasoning: "Silver has always been scared that she's going mad and I think she does let herself go to it. She decides that there's no point in trying to be in control. But that's really because she's losing control anyway, and she knows she is. She wants to take ownership of it."
In contrast to Silver's frantic life, the story is interspersed with chapters about mysterious, withdrawn Edna who is adopted by eco-protestors at the real-life protest camp at Stanton Moor in Derbyshire. Developers want to deforest the hillside to make room for a quarry and with eviction looming, Sudbery's novel is timely publicity for their campaign.
What about the author?
Sudbery wrote her debut after wrangling a four-day week from her computer firm employers. She says elements of Silver are based on herself, adding: "There must be thousands of 30-somethings in Britain who spent their 20s raving and taking far more drugs than were good for them. Of course we've all settled down and had kids now, and we all work in IT."
Is it any good?
Silver and her mates are larger than life and the story is powered by their funny, vivacious personalities. Like all extroverts, there are times when you want them to sit still and be quiet for a moment, so the calmer eco-camp sections are sometimes a welcome break. Drawn-out trippy scenes occasionally slow the building tension and cliff-hanger plot (who is Edna and what's her link to Silver?). But on the whole this is an original, vivid and energetic novel.
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Review from The Big Issue in the North magazine, 7th - 13th June 2004
THE DYING OF DELIGHT
Clare Sudbery
(Diva £9.99)
Hacked off by her homophobic colleagues, Silver drops out of her 'straight' job as a computer programmer to become an artist. Still reeling from her mother¹s apparent suicide, and attempting to fix her friend, the volatile Andy, she quickly immerses herself in a culture of drug dealers, fetish freaks, DJs, ravers, slackers and politicos. Meanwhile, a mysterious young woman, Edna, joins the eco-warriors at Derbyshire's Nine Ladies site, and brings them some additional troubles of her own.
Silver and Edna¹s stories run side by side, as they struggle to come to terms with their pasts, only to dramatically collide on the day of the eclipse, in a way that no one would predict.
Told in an exuberant style, with Silver as its sympathetic heroine, Sudbery conveys the highs and lows of a drug-enhanced existence, not least the bleak realisation that there comes a point when the drugs don¹t work.
****(4/5)
DIANE BROUGHTON
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