In for a treat

I found these cards  in my jacket pocket the other day. They comprise notes I’d made in advance of ‘Under the Paving Stones’ – the Faber Social night of experimental fiction that we put together to celebrate publication of The Fountain in the Forest – knowing that I would have to introduce three great women writers on the night. In order of their appearance (on a bill which also included Kirsty Gunn, Richard Milward and myself): Joanna Walsh, Iphgenia Baal, and Eley Williams. Since this particular Faber Social had been put together collaboratively, Faber’s Lee Brackstone and I shared MC-ing duties: Lee introduced me; I introduced Joanna; Lee, Kirsty. After the interval I introduced Iphgenia, Lee did the honours for Richard Milward, and I introduced Eley Williams.

The first card quotes Rosie Šnajdr in the TLS. My additional note ‘(MANCHESTER TONIGHT)’ was a reminder that I should mention the Republic of Consciousness Prize 2018 (a prize for books published by small presses) the shortlist for which which to be announced that same night, 19 February, following a day of panel discussions on the subject of small presses at the University of Manchester’s New Writing Centre.

These are my notes for Joanna Walsh, whose Worlds from the Word’s End is my favourite short story collection of 2017. (FYI, I did check with Joanna and the title of her forthcoming novel Break.Up  is pronounced ‘break up’, not ‘break-dot-up’.)

These notes on Iphgenia Baal include a reminder that I was to draw the winner of our The Fountain in the Forest prize crossword. BTW it may not be clear from my handwriting, but the line ‘Puts the psycho back into psychogeography’ is a quote from Stewart Home.

And finally, Eley Williams – and my additional note here was to check with the audience whether anyone knew if the shortlist for the Republic of Consciousness Prize had been announced yet, up in Manchester — it had!

Since then, of course – this week! – Eley Williams and Influx Press have together won the Republic of Consciouness Prize (here is a prize that rewards both author and publisher) for Williams’ brilliant collection, Attrib. and other stories (As I said in my notes, it is hard to think of a debut short story collection that has made such an impact.) The result was announced in Fyvie Hall, at the University of Westminster on Monday, and reported in the Bookseller here. Congratulations to all.

I was delighted to learn that to celebrate Influx and Williams’s win, the TLS have brought Rosie Šnajdr’s review ‘Toothsome Prose’ (the piece quoted above) out from behind their usual paywall.

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The Fountain in the Forest — book trailer

The new trailer for my latest novel The Fountain in the Forest (Faber and Faber, 2018) was shot at the October Gallery in London, and on location in the South of France, in and around the town of Vence in the Alpes-Maritime region, an area where parts of the novel are set.

Since the novel explores the legacy of the 90 days between the end of the Miners’ Strike and the Battle of the Beanfield in 1985, I wanted to be able to include at least some new footage shot using media that I might have had access to at the time, in those pre-digital days, so some of the trailer is shot using Super-8.

The close-up footage of water purling and playing in the fountains of Vence was shot on location in August 2017, on a vintage Canon 512XL. It’s a beautiful camera, an absolute pleasure to use, and the delicate clattering sound that it makes is incredibly evocative. While I was shooting in the Place du Peyra in Vence, I was aware that someone had stopped to watch, although he stood still and remained respectfully out of shot. Once I’d finished, he came and shook my hand, nodding at the camera enthusiastically. ‘Super-huit?’ he asked.

‘Oui,’ I said. ‘C’est Super-huit!’

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Read ‘The Fountain in the Forest by Tony White review – alternative social history’ by Sukhdev Sandhu (Guardian, 24 February 2018)

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More reviews of The Fountain in the Forest

Guardian review

Sukhdev Sandhu has reviewed The Fountain in the Forest for the Guardian:

If, in some circles, crime fiction is still associated with penny dreadfuls and mass-market mediocrity, [Gertrude] Stein represents a counter-tradition – one that includes Jorge Luis Borges and William S Burroughs, Paul Auster and Thomas Pynchon – of highbrow and formally adventurous writers who have bent sinister, seeing this residually pulp genre as an ally in the war against a bland literary mainstream. The Fountain in the Forest is a rich, riveting example of this alternative lineage. […] White’s innovation is to fuse his revisionist narrative with techniques associated with Oulipo, the group of writers and mathematicians, including Raymond Queneau and Georges Perec, who produced work according to sometimes baffling rules and constraints (Perec’s novel A Void featured not a single “e”). White forces himself to use all the words that comprise answers to the Guardian’s Quick Crossword from March to April 1985 […] The words (Mondale, Ulster, Orwell, Derby Day) emerge as the collective lexical unconscious of the period, exude the strange poetry of the Shipping Forecast, and – mandated as they are – invite comparison with the kind of planted evidence that plays a key role in the novel. […] More insecure writers would have laboured to show off their erudition and ended up producing drily conceptual fare. White is always convivial company […] a restless, endlessly curious, somewhat centrifugal writer. His books […] are characterised by stylistic innovation, a feeling for place, a love of rogues and rebels. The Fountain in the Forest is no different. It’s also the opening salvo in a trilogy. I’m already awaiting the next.

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Read ‘The Fountain in the Forest by Tony White review – alternative social history’ by Sukhdev Sandhu (Guardian, 24 February 2018) here.

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Ray’s ‘Recommends’ in Blackwell’s Oxford

Thank you to staff at both Blackwells and Waterstones in Oxford for inviting me over to sign their respective stocks of The Fountain in the Forest this weekend. Waterstones staff including Chris and Katie have been very supportive of the novel, including on Instagram (and I love this photo that they posted, which I have now learned was taken amidst the ivy in St Mary Magdalen’s churchyard over the road).

I was also honoured that The Fountain in the Forest is one of bookseller Ray’s ‘Recommends’ in Blackwells – I love the succinctness of his review!

There is also talk of an event at the Oxford Waterstones, so watch this space for info.

In the meantime, the team at Faber have produced this banner for our February dates:

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‘Under the Paving Stones’ — Faber Social and Tony White present a night of experimental fiction with Iphgenia Baal, Kirsty Gunn, Richard Milward, Joanna Walsh, Tony White and Eley Williams – 19 February 7:00 pm

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The Fountain in the Forest: first reviews

It is a great thrill that The Fountain in the Forest has had some substantial print reviews in the Times Literary Supplement, the Financial Times and Spectator, as well online in Crime Time’s January round-up, and from the author and critic Nina Allan. Here are some quotes and links:

“a gripping police procedural […] impeccably Oulipian in conception and execution […] The Fountain in the Forest sets the author and his readers a bracingly high bar.” David Collard, TLS

“an engaging plot allows plenty of room for radical yet accessible interventions. The Fountain in the Forest can be read on several levels: as a crime novel, a Bildungsroman, a tale of protest and institutional violence, as well as a text written with the use of a mandated vocabulary. […] That all these stylistic fireworks can illuminate several rich plot lines, each with multiple twists, which an attentive reader will enjoy disentangling, is the best vindication of experimental prose. […] Let’s hope for more surprises in the next instalment.” Anna Aslanyan, Financial Times

“Tony White’s latest novel begins for all the world like a police procedural, following the delightfully named sleuth Rex King as he investigates the grisly murder of man in a Covent Garden theatre. […] The Fountain in the Forest is a slow-burner. White lulls the reader into absorbed bewilderment before weaving the strands together with all the deftness of a seasoned crime writer. […] pays timely homage, in a far subtler way than certain self-styled Brexit novels, to the strength of British ties with the continent. […] The Fountain in the Forest is told with an obituarist’s unsentimental deference. Enjoy it as a noir entertainment or as an evocative picture postcard from the past.” Houman Barekat, Spectator

“A truly intriguing venture into the crime genre by the talented White […] But there is more to the novel than the actual plot, as White unveils a series of literary challenges which throw the whole story a softball curve, while never slowing the plot down. Engaging and at the same time a challenge, this is both a good read and a cheeky divertimento, and all rather unique.” Maxim Jakubowski, Crime Time

Tony White speaking at The Fountain in the Forest launch, Daunt Books, 11 January 2018. Photo: © Kit Caless, 2018

“The Fountain in the Forest can be read with all the pleasure you might expect from a knotty police procedural, a knowledgeably detailed, intriguing and compelling police procedural at that. The story drives ever forward, even when it takes you backwards in time to take a look at the roots of the crime in question. Even when it flip-flops between two distinct time-streams and character identities within the space of a single sentence, the sense throughout is of a steady and satisfying accretion of significant information, i.e clues – exactly what you’d hope for from any good thriller. […] You could read the novel with no knowledge of OULIPO and enjoy it just as well. […] Anyone who enjoyed Keith Ridgway’s Hawthorn & Child or Nicholas Royle’s First Novel will love this book. Anyone who is into Ian Rankin or Denise Mina will love it, too. […] Above all, there is the joy inherent in a book well made: language expertly deployed, place wonderfully evoked, ideas, characters, memories, theories, political subtext brought vibrantly to life, a good story well told. The Fountain in the Forest would be a worthy contender for the CWA Gold Dagger. It is equally the kind of book that might win the Goldsmiths Prize. Read, and enjoy.” Nina Allan

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Buy The Fountain in the Forest direct from publisher Faber and Faber

‘Under the Paving Stones’ — Faber Social and Tony White present a night of experimental fiction with Iphgenia Baal, Kirsty Gunn, Richard Milward, Joanna Walsh, Tony White and Eley Williams – 19 February 7:00 pm

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Crossword competition

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Find out more about Tony White’s crossword competition, T&Cs etc

Buy The Fountain in the Forest direct from publisher Faber and Faber

‘Intelligence Squared’, David Collard reviews The Fountain in the Forest for the TLS

‘Under the Paving Stones’ — Faber Social and Tony White present a night of experimental fiction with Iphgenia Baal, Kirsty Gunn, Stewart Home, Joanna Walsh, Tony White and Eley Williams – 19 February 7:00 pm

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Book, launched

Photo: © Kit Caless, 2018

Thank you to Faber and Faber and to the wonderful Daunt Books on Marylebone High Street for hosting such a memorable launch for The Fountain in the Forest on 11 January, and to the 200-plus friends and colleagues who came along. Thank you also to my editor at Faber, Lee Brackstone, who rose to the challenge by writing and delivering an Oulipo-inspired speech* that was both touching and very funny. Many books were sold — and many signed! Thank you again. To be able to celebrate the publication of a book in such great company really is the cherry on the cake.

Just before the launch I was at BBC Broadcasting House pre-recording an interview for BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking, a programme about Protest and Counterculture – from the Columbia University occcupations of 1968 to the Battle of the Beanfield, and 1990s rave culture. The programme went out later that same night, and you can ‘listen again’ here. (During what was – thanks to host Matthew Sweet and my fellow guests – a fascinating conversation to have been part of, I did also manage to mention the important campaigning being done by the Orgreave Truth and Justice Campaign, and by the charity INQUEST.)

The Fountain in the Forest also had its first print review, in the TLS (No. 5989, 12 January 2018) which was published that same morning. This is subscriber-only content at the moment, but here’s an extract:

Much experimental writing may strike sceptical readers as “clever-clever”, a phrase that Gilbert Adair once observed tends to mean “half-clever” rather than “double”. The skills involved in the production of, say, Oulipian texts may dazzle in their virtuosity, but the result may seem to lack the pulse of life.

Tony White’s fifth novel, a gripping police procedural set in and around the London Borough of Holborn, while impeccably Oulipian in conception and execution, has that pulse. The hero is Detective Sergeant Rex King, smart, single, with a taste for Fred Perry shirts and Harrington jackets. When a horribly mutilated body is discovered in the Georgian scenery-painting studio of a Covent Garden theatre we follow his investigation into a crime that appears to implicate an old friend. […] None of this may seem to be in any way experimental. But certain words in each chapter appear in bold print as part of a “mandated vocabulary”, a pre-determined lexicon derived from – well, that would give the game away, and I don’t want to spoil the fun. […] This may all seem highly contrived (which of course it is) but there’s no stink of the lamp, and the complex, non-linear plot barrels along confidently, enriched rather than impeded by the technique. I occasionally found myself checking the appendices to find out in advance what words would appear, admiring all the more the ingenuity involved in their seamless inclusion. […] The Fountain in the Forest sets the author and his readers a bracingly high bar.

(I was also delighted to see that this same issue of the TLS carries a review of Benjamin Koerber’s English translation for the University of Texas Press of Using Life, a novel by persecuted Egyptian novelist Ahmed Naji. I interviewed Naji last spring for the English PEN as part of their Festival of Modern Literature, and you can read that interview here.)

*Thanks to Lee Brackstone for his generosity in allowing me to post this print-out of notes for his speech, which he signed on the night:

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‘Intelligence Squared’, David Collard reviews The Fountain in the Forest for the TLS

‘Under the Paving Stones’ — Faber Social and Tony White present a night of experimental fiction with Iphgenia Baal, Kirsty Gunn, Stewart Home, Joanna Walsh, Tony White and Eley Williams – 19 February 7:00 pm

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Early reader reviews

One of the great things about social media is that readers are able to post book reviews within hours or days of publication. Here are a just a few of the reader reviews of The Fountain in the Forest that have appeared on Twitter, Goodreads and Instagram.

‘You’re going to want to read this book and you deserve to enjoy the mix of bewilderment and shock I just experienced, because in a world where everything is telegraphed having the applecart upended, smashed to pieces and then sold as firewood is something to cherish […] plays with the genre with a twist so brazen that, on its own, is a commentary on the police procedural […] a gripping stunning read. As thrilling, page-turning and suspenseful as any potboiler anyone will read this year, brilliantly set up […] The Fountain in the Forest has set a high bar for the rest of the novels I read this year.’ ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ @Mondyboy

‘A book to sit back and enjoy.  The cover is so beautiful that I strongly recommend getting hold of a paper copy, rather than an e-book.  […] This is a book to savour and think about.  […] Great for Book Clubs or studying.’ ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ @emmabbooks

‘An extremely clever narrative and a very quirky storytelling style. Loved this one for all it’s differences to my normal reads.’ ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ @Lizzy11268

‘one of the most original and unique novels I’ve read for a while, offering a fascinating and intricate crime story that genuinely keeps you guessing until the end.’ ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ @bookshelfwonders

Thank you all for this amazing feedback!

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Buy The Fountain in the Forest direct from publisher Faber and Faber

‘Under the Paving Stones’ — Faber Social and Tony White present a night of experimental fiction with Iphgenia Baal, Kirsty Gunn, Stewart Home, Joanna Walsh, Tony White and Eley Williams – 19 February 7:00 pm

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Published today: The Fountain in the Forest

My new novel The Fountain in the Forest is published today – 4 January 2018. Here’s the blurb:

When a brutally murdered man is found hanging in a Covent Garden theatre, Detective Sergeant Rex King becomes obsessed with the case. Who is this anonymous corpse, and why has he been ritually mutilated? But as Rex explores the crime scene further, the mystery deepens, and he finds himself confronting his own secret history instead. Who, more importantly, is Rex King?

Shifting between Holborn Police Station, an abandoned village in rural 1980s France, and the Battle of the Beanfield at Stonehenge, The Fountain in the Forest transforms the traditional crime narrative into something dizzyingly unique. At once an avant-garde linguistic experiment, thrilling police procedural, philosophical meditation on liberty, and counter-culture bildungsroman, this is an iconoclastic novel of unparalleled ambition.

Here is Luke Bird’s phenomenal cover – hopefully you will see this around a fair bit in the coming weeks and months…

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Buy The Fountain in the Forest direct from publisher Faber and Faber

‘Under the Paving Stones’ — Faber Social and Tony White present a night of experimental fiction with Iphgenia Baal, Kirsty Gunn, Stewart Home, Joanna Walsh, Tony White and Eley Williams – 19 February 7:00 pm

Sign up to receive news and invites to book launches and events from me and my publishers and producers