Description

‘That the music may be polyphonic is no grounds for not listening,’ scribbles a man for his stone-deaf friend. In Is Beauty Good there are many such voices. People talk to various listeners, even to silent ones. They talk to themselves, they resort to handwriting. The inanimate too may be granted a whimsical presence: a child’s tricycle, an antique chest. But, witty and ironic, the novel speaks with one voice of the things that speak, and don’t speak to us: ‘I drank carrot juice, beetroot juice. Disgusting. It seemed undignified, to be so desperate as to drink beetroot juice. Yet people do it without a second thought.’

It begins in Berlin by the Wall. It ends in Berlin – still before 1989 – in the Tiergarten Zoo, to the boom and roar and moan of animals. More often we find ourselves in mountains or an English garden, in the natural world, the loss of which Is Beauty Good so memorably laments.

Publisher Review

‘So extraordinarily good that one wants more, recognising a writer who can conjure an inner life and spirit, can envisage, in unconnected episodes, a complete world: one unified not by external circumstances but by patterns of the writer’s mind.’ Isabel Quigly, Financial Times ‘Belben’s eye for the movement and texture of the natural world is extraordinarily acute and she has a poet’s ear for language . . . A confession of fulfilment, of endless curiosity for, and love of life.’ Selina Hastings Daily Telegraph ‘Belben has written pages about sexual desire, frustration and loss which are clearer and more compelling than any I can think of in literature . . . An achievement to celebrate.’ Maggie Gee, The Observer ‘From the publisher that brought Ann Quin back into print comes another lost classic from an English visionary. Rosalind Belben’s work is both terrific and disconcerting, an essential read for lovers of extraordinary fiction.’ Camilla Grudova ‘Extremely beautiful, utterly convincing, and rivals anything by Virginia Woolf.’ Melissa Harrison, The Guardian ‘Belben takes a brief but unforgettable foray into the mind of an isolated middle-aged woman who describes herself as “an unfortunate ghost.” Readers will be glad to discover this striking narrative.’ Publishers Weekly ‘A seductively strange novel. In Belben’s writing, time periods dissolve: the phenomenon of the medieval pageant is invoked; Robin Hood becomes a character; dreams are recorded; and desires rise up, then settle down.’ Rhian Sasseen, Electric Literature ‘A complex, emotionally intense narrative with experimental shifts in style and tone, and vivid lyrical passages [. . .] Belben writes about nature with a poetic intensity that is quite wonderful, revealing a deep connection to the natural world, that her protagonist clearly shares.’ Joseph Schreiber, Rough Ghosts