En cours de chargement...
A misfit man finds a misfit dog. Ray, aged fifty-seven, "too old for starting over, too young for giving up", and One Eye, a vicious little bugger, smaller than expected, a good ratter. Both are accustomed to being alone, unloved, outcast - but they quickly find in each other a strange companionship. As spring turns to summer, their relationship grows and intensifies, until a savage act forces them to abandon the precarious life they'd established, and take to the road.
A wholly different kind of love story, Spill Simmer Falter Wither is a devastating portrait of loneliness and loss, and of the restorative power of friendship.
A life in permanent and self-imposed exile
At times, 'Spill Simmer Falter Wither' calls to mind an improbable collision between the universes of Proust and Beckett in contemporary rural Ireland. Even though the first person narrator, a middle aged misfit living in his deceased father's hovel, lacks the richness of Proust's social memories, he nevertheless manages to exhibit a rather lively mental existence nourished by the memory-charged objects around him. Sara Baume demonstrates her deep sense of psychology when the hermit's life of introspection is affected by his decision to adopt a one-eyed dog for companionship. Is One-Eye a potential source of salvation for the narrator or a liability ? The author keeps the reader guessing to the very end in her sensitive account of poor man's seemingly aimless journey with a most imperfect pet.