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The Edge of the Object
A visually arresting triptych, Daniel Williams’ first novel is a playful exploration of words and space, of presence and absence, both on the page and in the mind of the narrator: a young photographer who has swapped a London high- rise for a rural Normandy hovel. Set in the 1990s against the backdrop of British indie pop, and written predominantly in striking second person prose, The Edge of the Object is a study of love, alienation, and of France through the lens of a Francophile, captured in a sequence of stunning calligrams.
Leaving London and his Leica behind, a young photographer goes to live in France, already feeling sated by the city and his two obsessions: photography and music. He is also putting distance between himself and Louise, the womanhe loves, in a likely ill-conceived attempt to test the strength of the relationship. In Normandy, a derelict cottage awaits him, and there he condemns himself to a minimum of six months' solitary confinement.
But before long another siren city calls; he is lured away from his hermit-like existence to stay with friends in Paris, and then to go on tour with two up-and coming indie bands: Solar Plexus and the Faceless Saints. Amid the controlled chaos of life on tour, the photographer meets a woman called Sophie with whom he becomes infatuated. After the tour is over, the attraction leads him to break free of his solitude for a second time, and return to the south of France, hoping to discover that she feels the same way about him.
Leaving London and his Leica behind, a young photographer goes to live in France, already feeling sated by the city and his two obsessions: photography and music. He is also putting distance between himself and Louise, the womanhe loves, in a likely ill-conceived attempt to test the strength of the relationship. In Normandy, a derelict cottage awaits him, and there he condemns himself to a minimum of six months' solitary confinement.
But before long another siren city calls; he is lured away from his hermit-like existence to stay with friends in Paris, and then to go on tour with two up-and coming indie bands: Solar Plexus and the Faceless Saints. Amid the controlled chaos of life on tour, the photographer meets a woman called Sophie with whom he becomes infatuated. After the tour is over, the attraction leads him to break free of his solitude for a second time, and return to the south of France, hoping to discover that she feels the same way about him.
165 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 3, 2023
This clever work by Daniel Williams straddles the boundary between fiction and art book, an engaging story told not only in sentences and paragraphs but also in the shape of the text. It is reminiscent at times of concrete poetry, words on the page forming shapes - calligrams, they are called - meant to convey or comment on aspects of the story. The publisher, Half Pint Press, has done a nice job packaging the book as a triptych of booklets, all tucked into a handmade cover like a DVD set. The story itself didn't interest me much, a rather conventional tale of a young man who leaves London to spread his wings in France. Williams wrote the book 25 years ago as a young man himself but struggled to find a publisher due to the unconventional presentation of the work. In a way, this makes the story more charming, as it's peppered with 90s references that recall a different time and place for most of us.
November 27, 2022
The Edge of the Object by Daniel Williams is published by The Half Print Press, which I'd previously known for their unique edition of Pessoa's The Book of Disquiet, which won The MCBA Prize in 2017 , an international artist's book award.
This is their first original novel and while an e-book is available, the physical book is a work of art: a limited edition run of 100 copies, with three A4 size books, one each in the colours of the French tricolore, enclosed in a slip case.
It also came with one of the pieces of Pessoan ephemera as an alternative to the usual bookmark sent by presses, a nice touch.
Plot-wise the novel is set in the 1990s. The main character, I'd guess in their 20s, is a photographer by mission, his subject-of-choice indie bands, although employed by London Underground to make ends meet. He leaves London, his Leica camera, and a long-term relationship to live for six months in isolation in a cottage in Normandy, France. As the novel progresses he spends some time touring France, as something of an official hanger-on playing with two indie-bands, before returning to his solitude. He also muses on his relationship between two women, the one he left behind in London and a wished-for one with another he met on the tour.
Williams has explained in an essay at The Quietus how his novel was inspired by Un homme qui dort by Georges Perec, including the second-person narrative used for the first and third volume of the novel.
And in a further article on the book's own website how he originally wrote the novel in the 1990s, but at the time couldn't find a publisher prepared to manage it's unusual format.
In particular, the single-page chapters of the first and third of the volumes are presented in the 'calligrams', with white space around, or inside, the text, as well as black shapes, used to represent a key image for each page - for example here Jean d'Arc and a candlebra respectively:
And my personal favourite (in my own, less accomplished photograph), le maillot à pois from le Tour de France:
In his original synposis to putative publishers from the 1990s Williams explained his approach:
From the reader's perspective is slows down the reading experience, making this a more contemplative read, where one seeks the connection between the image and the text.
The middle-part is more conventional in both narrative and format, printed conventionally and told in the first-person, although rather wonderfully each copy comes with an artefact of the trip slipped in the pages, in my case part of a tourist map of Paris. The more conventional approach also reflects the less isolated nature of the story, the narrator now travelling around France and in company. But at the end he finds himself drawn again to his solitude, abandoning the band and crew:
At least the panic's gone now. I've lain here long enough to feel secure, though it's a fair bet that shame at my act of desertion will rise afresh in the morning. But for now, fuck it. So what if they have a show, a stage, a hotel, and I have only a storm-damaged cottage in Normandy, the sneers, and my thoughts. You can perform on a stage and be as forgettable as a dream. And you can pass someone sitting outside a cafe and unwiningly stay in that watcher's mind and eye for the rest of their life.
Impressive.
Further reviews:
https://sd-stewart.com/2022/05/21/the...
https://kaggsysbookishramblings.wordp...
https://www.caughtbytheriver.net/2021...
The Half Pint Press operates out of a back bedroom within sight of Peckham Rye in South-East London. It’s mostly the work of Tim Hopkins, although my wife Jenn does a good deal of work on the projects also.
The Half Pint Press was founded in 2010 by London-based book artist Tim Hopkins. Its first book, an edition of Fernando Pessoa’s The Book of Disquiet presented on ephemera gathered together in a box, won the 2017 MCBA Prize from the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. In unique limited editions, it has also published work by Eley Williams, Mary Butts, Gertrude Stein, and Raymonde Linossier.
This is their first original novel and while an e-book is available, the physical book is a work of art: a limited edition run of 100 copies, with three A4 size books, one each in the colours of the French tricolore, enclosed in a slip case.
It also came with one of the pieces of Pessoan ephemera as an alternative to the usual bookmark sent by presses, a nice touch.
Plot-wise the novel is set in the 1990s. The main character, I'd guess in their 20s, is a photographer by mission, his subject-of-choice indie bands, although employed by London Underground to make ends meet. He leaves London, his Leica camera, and a long-term relationship to live for six months in isolation in a cottage in Normandy, France. As the novel progresses he spends some time touring France, as something of an official hanger-on playing with two indie-bands, before returning to his solitude. He also muses on his relationship between two women, the one he left behind in London and a wished-for one with another he met on the tour.
Williams has explained in an essay at The Quietus how his novel was inspired by Un homme qui dort by Georges Perec, including the second-person narrative used for the first and third volume of the novel.
And in a further article on the book's own website how he originally wrote the novel in the 1990s, but at the time couldn't find a publisher prepared to manage it's unusual format.
In particular, the single-page chapters of the first and third of the volumes are presented in the 'calligrams', with white space around, or inside, the text, as well as black shapes, used to represent a key image for each page - for example here Jean d'Arc and a candlebra respectively:
And my personal favourite (in my own, less accomplished photograph), le maillot à pois from le Tour de France:
In his original synposis to putative publishers from the 1990s Williams explained his approach:
The shapes idea is linked to the character being a photographer; it is related to the still life genre, and emphasises the ways in which photography and writing make us look at familiar objects anew. The shapes are also symbols that the writing does not necessarily point out or overstate. As a sequence, they mimic the idea of a series of photographs, and more than this, will hopefully give some sense of the shape of the character’s life, and the things that have helped to shape it.
From the reader's perspective is slows down the reading experience, making this a more contemplative read, where one seeks the connection between the image and the text.
The middle-part is more conventional in both narrative and format, printed conventionally and told in the first-person, although rather wonderfully each copy comes with an artefact of the trip slipped in the pages, in my case part of a tourist map of Paris. The more conventional approach also reflects the less isolated nature of the story, the narrator now travelling around France and in company. But at the end he finds himself drawn again to his solitude, abandoning the band and crew:
At least the panic's gone now. I've lain here long enough to feel secure, though it's a fair bet that shame at my act of desertion will rise afresh in the morning. But for now, fuck it. So what if they have a show, a stage, a hotel, and I have only a storm-damaged cottage in Normandy, the sneers, and my thoughts. You can perform on a stage and be as forgettable as a dream. And you can pass someone sitting outside a cafe and unwiningly stay in that watcher's mind and eye for the rest of their life.
Impressive.
Further reviews:
https://sd-stewart.com/2022/05/21/the...
https://kaggsysbookishramblings.wordp...
https://www.caughtbytheriver.net/2021...
October 6, 2022
This book was published by The Half Pint Press, a tiny independent press in the UK. Currently, you won't find it on Amazon. If you want to purchase it, follow the instructions to buy on the novel's website -- https://theedgeoftheobject.wordpress....
This is a beautiful book -- comes in three small volumes. On the book's website, the author says he wrote it 25 years ago (he is 52 in 2022, when it was published) but could not find a publisher. The problem being not so much the story but the structure. In the first and third parts of the novel, the pages have cutouts of different figures, sometimes in the middle of the text. The figures or objects relate to the text, sometimes obviously sometimes not. You can see how it looks on the opening page of the book's website.
The story concerns a young man who works hard for a couple of years to get enough money to spend six months in France, in a rented but broken down dwelling. He his a photographer but he leaves his beloved camera and his girlfriend Louise at home and goes, it seems, to find himself. I did not find him to be the most likeable fellow, too much angst for me, but his search seemed sincere.
The second volume does not contain the cutouts and reads quickly. In it, our young man is accompanying a friend and his friend's band on tour, mostly in France. In the first and third volumes our young man is mostly at his rented dwelling. He rides his bike to get to and from places. In fact, he rode it from his home in England (presumably using a ferry to get from England to France) to the dwelling and uses it to visit villages, towns, and cities. (Using the bike earns him points from me!) It is a very introspective book, as much of the time is spent in our young man's head.
The first and third volumes require effort to read but are very worth the effort. I enjoyed this book quite a lot. Thank you to The Half Pint Press for publishing it.
This is a beautiful book -- comes in three small volumes. On the book's website, the author says he wrote it 25 years ago (he is 52 in 2022, when it was published) but could not find a publisher. The problem being not so much the story but the structure. In the first and third parts of the novel, the pages have cutouts of different figures, sometimes in the middle of the text. The figures or objects relate to the text, sometimes obviously sometimes not. You can see how it looks on the opening page of the book's website.
The story concerns a young man who works hard for a couple of years to get enough money to spend six months in France, in a rented but broken down dwelling. He his a photographer but he leaves his beloved camera and his girlfriend Louise at home and goes, it seems, to find himself. I did not find him to be the most likeable fellow, too much angst for me, but his search seemed sincere.
The second volume does not contain the cutouts and reads quickly. In it, our young man is accompanying a friend and his friend's band on tour, mostly in France. In the first and third volumes our young man is mostly at his rented dwelling. He rides his bike to get to and from places. In fact, he rode it from his home in England (presumably using a ferry to get from England to France) to the dwelling and uses it to visit villages, towns, and cities. (Using the bike earns him points from me!) It is a very introspective book, as much of the time is spent in our young man's head.
The first and third volumes require effort to read but are very worth the effort. I enjoyed this book quite a lot. Thank you to The Half Pint Press for publishing it.
November 27, 2022
This book is published by the boutique publisher Half Pint Press – run “out of a back bedroom” in South London by Tim Hopkins – who correctly describes himself as a book artist.
Previous publications have for example included “The Sea’s Better Plans” by Eley Williams (2018 Republic of Consciousness Prize winner for “Attrib.”) – six poems printed on a Mobius strip inside a flip top jar.
This is their first novel, some 5 years or so after their founding, but the idea of the book was one of the original projects which lay behind the conception of the press (as the author is friends with the publisher and wrote the book more than 25 years ago only to fail to find a publisher prepared to take on the concept).
The production of it is (as would be expected) excellent – three glossy style A4 books (making up a French tricolour) in a cycling-themed sleeve – and with the first and third volumes presented with each page as a single snapshot of life (the choice of phrase by me is deliberate as the first party narrator is a photographer, albeit one without a camera) presented in the form of a calligram.
The effect is on one level distinctive, but I think for anyone with young children (or young enough to remember their own primary school days) is simply reads like a collection of “shape poems” albeit with little attempt to accept an Oulipian constraint to size the lines of the poem within the constraints of the shape, as the text is normally just blocks of prose with right/left justification and hyphens used as needed.
Actually, using the word shape poems or calligrams is not quite accurate as more often than not the shape (which reflects something of the text – be it the Eiffel Tower, a cat, the Tour de France Mountains jersey, a wine bottle, a candelabra etc etc) defines the negative space on the page with the text filling the rest. Again, while a little different the main effect is to make the text slightly harder to read given the sometimes quite wide mid-line breaks on a page size which is already much larger than a normal novel.
My personal issue though was with the text itself which is really quite a simple if not rather cliched story and very much not of the type I would normally read.
The narrator (an indie band photographer) has fled London after a relationship breakdown, without his camera. The first part is a combination of a cycle ride in France and then a spell living in a derelict cottage in the Normandy countryside – this is far from say Graham Robb or even Tim Moore standards (and with too many dreams and an ill-advised foray into excretion). The second seems him joining some indie-bands touring France – and is an again a combination of two rather cliched genres – Paris travel book (With some very predictable observations on how Paris differs from London) and then a very tame version of the band tour diary. And the third section I found the weakest of all as the narrator (who seems to regress in age to a teenager) becomes obsessed with a disinterested French girl he met briefly in the second section – and by the end I was scanning the text more than reading it.
So overall a book which I felt was very distinctive in form and very much not so in substance.
My rating reflects my own reading enjoyment but this is a beautiful production by a very special small press.
Previous publications have for example included “The Sea’s Better Plans” by Eley Williams (2018 Republic of Consciousness Prize winner for “Attrib.”) – six poems printed on a Mobius strip inside a flip top jar.
This is their first novel, some 5 years or so after their founding, but the idea of the book was one of the original projects which lay behind the conception of the press (as the author is friends with the publisher and wrote the book more than 25 years ago only to fail to find a publisher prepared to take on the concept).
The production of it is (as would be expected) excellent – three glossy style A4 books (making up a French tricolour) in a cycling-themed sleeve – and with the first and third volumes presented with each page as a single snapshot of life (the choice of phrase by me is deliberate as the first party narrator is a photographer, albeit one without a camera) presented in the form of a calligram.
The effect is on one level distinctive, but I think for anyone with young children (or young enough to remember their own primary school days) is simply reads like a collection of “shape poems” albeit with little attempt to accept an Oulipian constraint to size the lines of the poem within the constraints of the shape, as the text is normally just blocks of prose with right/left justification and hyphens used as needed.
Actually, using the word shape poems or calligrams is not quite accurate as more often than not the shape (which reflects something of the text – be it the Eiffel Tower, a cat, the Tour de France Mountains jersey, a wine bottle, a candelabra etc etc) defines the negative space on the page with the text filling the rest. Again, while a little different the main effect is to make the text slightly harder to read given the sometimes quite wide mid-line breaks on a page size which is already much larger than a normal novel.
My personal issue though was with the text itself which is really quite a simple if not rather cliched story and very much not of the type I would normally read.
The narrator (an indie band photographer) has fled London after a relationship breakdown, without his camera. The first part is a combination of a cycle ride in France and then a spell living in a derelict cottage in the Normandy countryside – this is far from say Graham Robb or even Tim Moore standards (and with too many dreams and an ill-advised foray into excretion). The second seems him joining some indie-bands touring France – and is an again a combination of two rather cliched genres – Paris travel book (With some very predictable observations on how Paris differs from London) and then a very tame version of the band tour diary. And the third section I found the weakest of all as the narrator (who seems to regress in age to a teenager) becomes obsessed with a disinterested French girl he met briefly in the second section – and by the end I was scanning the text more than reading it.
So overall a book which I felt was very distinctive in form and very much not so in substance.
My rating reflects my own reading enjoyment but this is a beautiful production by a very special small press.
October 11, 2022
Taking cues in part from the work of Georges Perec, this novel is simultaneously a celebration of French culture as seen through the Francophilic eyes of a post-collegiate young man, and a keen look into the headspace of a person far from home, isolated by way of a language barrier he is only partly able to breach and yearning for human connections beyond what he often feels capable of. An erstwhile photographer, the unnamed narrator feels alternately liberated and hamstrung by the absence of his Leica—the camera offering a valid excuse to be present at a remove while also preventing true engagement in any given experience. This tension resulting from being camera-less clings to the narrative, as we watch the narrator struggle to engage with his surroundings—taking as many steps backward as forward in this endeavor—as he moves from place to place.
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