Overview

From the doomed coalfields of north-east England to sun-bleached southern Spain, two brothers confront each other and themselves to overcome their family legacy Set against elemental landscapes - the dying coalfields of Northumberland and the barren wastelands of Andalusia - The Dead Don't Bleed is an unflinching exploration of fraternal rivalry, family trauma and the lasting effects of a violent patriarchy. Frank Bridge turned his back on his family's gangland conflicts in Northumberland decades ago. His brother, Gordon, fled to Spain with the proceeds of a disastrously botched robbery and has not been heard from since. Frank's life has taken a different path to the same sun-bleached landscape- he fell in love with Lorca's poetry and the woman who brought it to him. But when their gangster father, the head of their savage dynasty, dies, Frank feels he must track down Gordon and tell him that their father's reign of terror is over. Can Frank's appearance after twenty-five years prompt a truce - a reconciliation even - will his arrival merely be the catalyst for more turmoil and brutality? Taut, elegiac, violent and beautiful, Neil Rollinson's debut novel is about how family can make or break us. Beneath the scorching, pitiless Andalusian sun, the two brothers are finally brought together for one last reckoning.

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9781787335363

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Reviews

As lucid and direct as anything being written today… Every word is subordinated to its purpose: not the display but a mastery of the writing self… Rollinson has an impeccable ear -- Fiona Sampson * New Statesman *

This dangerous delight is what happens when one of Britain’s best poets marries Lorca’s landscapes and 1970s gangland Newcastle in fiction — a thrilling, deep-song, high-proof novel that’s brilliantly imagined, gorgeously crafted and several cuts above the usual debut -- Sarah Hall Throw Sexy Beast and Get Carter in a blender, add some Lorcanian duende from blasted blood-drenched Spain and some of that soul-sadness from sodden, post-industrial far north of England, and you'll get something like this gripping, compelling, elegiac and dismayed novel. Savage, sorrowful, superb -- Niall Griffiths Marrying the violence, duende and scouring light of Lorca's Andalusia to the broken bottles and police sirens of 1970s Newcastle, this compelling, beautifully written story of male heartbreak slyly explores the way poetry helps you survive your past -- Ruth Padel

Author Information

Neil Rollinson is the author of four poetry collections- A Spillage of Mercury (1996), Spanish Fly (2001), Demolition (2007) and Talking Dead (2015). He won the National Poetry Competition in 1997, received a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors in 2005, and was shortlisted for the 2015 Costa Poetry Prize for Talking Dead. The Dead Don't Bleed is his debut novel, and won the Deborah Rogers Award for previously unpublished prose writers in 2023.

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