A memoir by the 2019 Wellcome Prize winner Will Eaves that looks at the creation of eight piano pieces. 'A wonderfully sensitive and probing meditation on the writing of words and music' Rolf Hind, composer and pianist What lies behind the creation of a piece of music? Does it spring fully formed from a composer's mind, or take shape in the recesses of the brain, revealing itself in stages over time? Is the creative act deliberate or happenstance? An inspired vision or the result of practice? Will Eaves, author and musician, shares his experience of writing eight new piano pieces after many years away from the keyboard. Some of the music is found in old notebooks and teenage enthusiasms, some of it is caught on the wing - a response to the resurgence of the natural world during COVID lockdown. None of it is what he is meant to be doing. But then not all artistic interests are primary or professional interests. Sometimes it's the second-string activities, the diversions, that bring work - and life - into focus. The Point of Distraction is a unique account of music-making that embraces Bach, film, jazz, literature, neuroscience and the mystery of will power in its search for meaning. At its heart is a love of skill, an openness to self-doubt, and a belief that we are all more than our declared aims.

The Point of Distraction

Biographies & Memoirs

Eaves, Will

Arts & Literature

TLS Books

The Alldens live in a ramshackle house in suburban Bath. Don and Emily have four children: confident Liz, satirical Clive, shy Lotte, and Benjamin, the late arrival. Together they take the usual knocks, go to work, go abroad, go to university, go to pieces. Don and Emily stick it out, their strong marriage tested by experience and frustrated by love for Clive, the ardent boxing fan at odds with himself, their special child. But then ordinary is special, too, as the Alldens will discover thirty years later when Emily falls ill and her children come home to say goodbye. They meet on the poor outskirts of the city in which they grew up, a place where strangers gather and Emily lingers, present but missing, at the still centre of a changing world. This Is Paradise is an unflinching portrayal of the dynamics of family life. The Alldens are wholly recognizable and defiantly unique, close allies and closer adversaries who think they know each other. Their unforgettable story is an intimate record of survival that is tender, funny and ultimately heartbreaking.

This Is Paradise

Pan/Macmillan

There is in the short story, at its most characteristic, something we do not often find in the novel, Frank O’Connor wrote, "an intense awareness of human loneliness." The stories shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award with BookTrust 2017 all feature characters that are disconnected, willingly or unwillingly, from those around them: a mysterious out-of-towner is shunned by her new colleagues; a grieving husband retreats into his old compulsion for hoarding; a promising academic risks his career for a casual liaison with a younger man. And whether we follow the characters’ need to be alone – like the fisherman drifting dangerously far from shore – or trace it back to its root – like the daughter burying her violent father – what we find there is always unexpected. This year’s shortlist was selected by authors Eimear McBride, Jon McGregor and Sunjeev Sahota, as well as BBC Radio’s Di Speirs and acclaimed novelist Joanna Trollope who chaired the panel and introduces the collection.

The BBC National Short Story Award 2017

Literature & Fiction

Markovits, Benjamin

Oyeyemi, Helen

Fagan, Jenni

Jones, Cynan

Literary

Comma Press

Wall Street Journal “Distinctive Novel of the Year” selection
“[Murmur will] grip your mind in the very first pages, break your heart halfway through, and in the end, strangely, unexpectedly, restore your faith in human beings and their endless capacity for resilience.” ―Wellcome Book Prize chair of judges Elif Shafak in the Guardian
“Eaves’ playful, fiercely intelligent interpretation of aspects of the life of a character who closely resembles the brilliant, multifaceted Alan Turing is a dreamlike wonder of memory and consciousness. Its ways are mysterious, its effect deepens with every reading.” ―Republic of Consciousness Prize judge Catherine Taylor in the Guardian
In Murmur, a hallucinatory masterwork, Will Eaves invites us into the brilliant mind of Alec Pryor, a character inspired by Alan Turing. Turing, father of artificial intelligence and pioneer of radical new techniques to break the Nazi Enigma cipher during World War II, was later persecuted by the British state for “gross indecency with another male” and forced to undergo chemical castration. Set during the devastating period before Turing’s suicide, Murmur evokes an extraordinary life, the beauty and sorrows of love, and the nature of consciousness.
Will Eaves is the author of two poetry collections and five novels, including Murmur, the first of his novels to be published in the United States. His work has appeared in the Guardian, New Yorker, and Yale Review, and has been shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award and Encore Award. Murmur, winner of the Wellcome Book Prize and Republic of Consciousness Prize, has also been shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize and James Tait Black Prize, and longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize. Its first chapter was shortlisted for the BBC National Short Story Award. Previously the arts editor of the Times Literary Supplement, Eaves now co-hosts The Neuromantics podcast, teaches writing at the University of Warwick, and lives in London.

Murmur

British & Irish

Bellevue Literary Press

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Eaves, Will. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Eaves, Will