Overview

Author and illustrator Edward Carey presents a paean to connection at a time of isolation: a year of daily lockdown drawings posted on social media from his home in Texas. 'This book contains magic' A.L. Kennedy In March 2020, as lockdowns were imposed around the world, author and illustrator Edward Carey published a sketch on social media with a plan to keep posting a drawing a day from his family home in Austin, Texas, until life returned to normal. One hundred and fifty pencil stubs later, he was still drawing. Carey's hand moved with world events, chronicling pandemic and politics. It reached into the past, taking inspiration from history, and escaped grim reality through flights of vivid imagination and studies of the natural world. The drawings became a way of charting time, of moving forward, and maintaining connection at a time of isolation. charts a tumultuous year in pencil, finding beauty amid the horror of extraordinary times.

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9781913547202

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Reviews

There is so much sharp grace and so much generosity in Carey's art; I loved this book, for its beauty, and for its tenacity of heart.' - Katherine Rundell 'Once again Edward Carey has produced a remarkable book, this time blend of words and drawings about both outrage and consolation. Noted mask wearers, shut-ins and plague witnesses rub shoulders with monsters mythical and all too real. Those house arrested days when we mourned together, feared together, loved together as planet are recorded. Birds and writers gather. Injustices howl and graves multiply. And still human beings add beauty to reality - and hope. As Carey writes ''There's magic in the ordinary.'' The best of us uncover it and pass it on. This book contains magic.' - A.L. Kennedy 'Edward Carey probably didn't know what he was getting himself into when he committed to tweeting a daily lockdown drawing, but the results are the best thing by far to come out of a horrible year. Whether a startled moggy or a panda-eyed Hamlet, each drawing is stamped with Carey's unique style and off-kilter sensibility. B: A YEAR IN PLAGUES AND PENCILS is a constant delight.' - Graeme Macrae Burnet 'These characterful images are bound together here with words of wistfulness and modest hope.' - Hephzibah Anderson, The Observer Praise for Edward Carey 'Startlingly original' The Times 'Don't miss this eccentric charmer' @MargaretAtwood 'A playful writer whose charming sentences are works of careful craftsmanship' Washington Post 'Inspired' New York Times '[The Swallowed Man is] a marvellous feat of storytelling that dives deep into the madness accompanying solitude and creativity' Daily Mail 'Haunting ... beautiful ... [The Swallowed Man] offers much in which to luxuriate' Sunday Times

Praise for Edward Carey 'Startlingly original' The Times 'Don't miss this eccentric charmer' @MargaretAtwood 'A playful writer whose charming sentences are works of careful craftsmanship' Washington Post 'Inspired' New York Times '[The Swallowed Man is] a marvellous feat of storytelling that dives deep into the madness accompanying solitude and creativity' Daily Mail 'Haunting ... beautiful ... [The Swallowed Man] offers much in which to luxuriate' Sunday Times

Author Information

Edward Carey was born in Norfolk, England. He is a novelist, visual artist and has also written and directed a number of plays for the National Theatre of Romania and the Vilnius Small State Theatre, Lithuania. In England his plays and adaptations have been performed at the Young Vic Studio, the Battersea Arts Centre, and the Royal Opera House Studio. He is the author of the novels Observatory Mansions, Alva and Irva, and the acclaimed YA series The Iremonger Trilogy, which has been published in thirteen countries and has been optioned for film adaptation. Edward lives in Austin, Texas in the United States, and teaches at the University of Austin.

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