Adult Book of the Month
Spill Simmer Falter Wither by Sara Baume
Published by Tramp Press in 2015.
You find me on a Tuesday, on my Tuesday trip
to town. You're sellotaped to the inside pane of the jumble shop window.
A photograph of your mangled face and underneath an appeal for a COMPASSIONATE
AND TOLERANT OWNER. A PERSON WITHOUT OTHER PETS & WITHOUT CHILDREN
UNDER FOUR.
When an eccentric loner adopts a mutilated mongrel dog, the animal becomes
the first companion the man has known in his fifty-seven years. Raised
by his now deceased father, he fears the outside world and the other inhabitants
of his unnamed Irish seaside town. Aware of his ‘strangeness’,
he has little interaction with other people. When One Eye attacks another
dog, our narrator goes to further extemes to avoid contact with other
humans and eventually has to go on the run to prevent the authorities
from taking the dog.
The book portrays the pain, paranoia and utter loneliness experienced
by this man who is starved of human contact and the bond that develops
between this outcast man and his outcast dog. Addressing the reader through
the dog, Spill Simmer Falter Wither is a moving, memorable and
unique book depicting the isolation of a life lived on the outside.
‘This book is a stunning and wonderful achievement by a writer touched
by greatness. It is the most powerful debut novel I have read in several
years.’ Joseph O’Connor The Irish Times
‘Ambitious and impressive . . . Baume’s engaging, intriguing
and brightly original first novel may mark a comparably significant debut.’
Times Literary Supplement
Sara Baume was born in Lancashire in England and grew up in County Cork. She won the 2014 Davy Byrnes Short Story Award for her story ‘Solesearcher1’. Baume has been named Hennessy New Irish Writer 2015.
