Batlava Lake

by Adam Mars-Jones

Overview

Pristina, Kosovo, 1999. Barry Ashton, recently divorced, has been deployed as a civil engineer attached to the Royal Engineers corps in the British Army. In an extraordinary feat of ventriloquism, Adam Mars-Jones constructs a literary story with a thoroughly unliterary narrator, and a narrative that is anything but comic through the medium of a character who, essentially, is. Exploring masculinity, class and identity, Batlava Lake is a brilliant story of men and war by one of Britain's most accomplished writers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781913097622
Publisher:	Fitzcarraldo Editions
Publication date:	11/16/2021
Pages:	104
Sales rank:	1,101,647
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x (d)

About the Author

Adam Mars-Jones’ first collection of stories, Lantern Lecture, won a Somerset Maugham Award in 1982, and he appeared on Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists’ lists in 1983 and 1993. His debut novel, Pilcrow, was published in 2008 by Faber & Faber. His second novel, Cedilla, was also published by Faber & Faber in 2011. His essay, Noriko Smiling (Notting Hill Editions, 2011), focuses on Yasujiro Ozu, a master of Japanese cinema. His memoir, Kid Gloves, was published by Particular Books in August 2015. His selected film writing, Second Sight, was published by Reaktion Books in September 2019. Box Hill appeared with Fitzcarraldo Editions in March 2020. He writes book reviews for the Observer and the LRB, and about film for the TLS.

Editorial Reviews

09/06/2021

British novelist and critic Mars-Jones (Box Hill) delivers a wry and offbeat story of a civilian man stationed in Pristina, the capital city of Kosovo, during the Kosovo War. Barry Ashton, a recently divorced civil engineer, is sent to work as an auxiliary to the Royal Engineers corps in the capital. There, he slips between reflections on his recently ended marriage and surreal observations of the soldiers around him, at one point describing their protection of him as akin to circling the wagons around women and children in a western. An air of boredom suffuses the narrative, as Ashton describes how he and his companions pass the time: drinking games, a boat race, and a barbecue that goes terribly wrong when the Albanians detect the aroma of meat. The barbecue forms the crux of the novella’s surreal mood, as Ashton comments flippantly on the zombielike manner of the locals (“I’m not being nasty, but if bits of them had started dropping off, well... it wouldn’t have been a total shock. They’d had their lives taken away and not found a way back to them yet”). The chaotic structure can get confusing, but there’s no shortage of entertainment value. Mars-Jones’s intensely comical depiction of a thoroughly British state of mind makes this a hoot. Agent: Anna Webber, United Agents. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

‘Adam Mars-Jones has never needed to write at great length to convince readers of his talent. ... Mars-Jones’s latest work is a sliver of a novel that provides ample evidence of his prowess. ... Box Hill is not a novel for the prudish, but it is a masterclass in authorial control. ... Despite its diminutive length, it is rich with detail and complexity, and has plenty to demonstrate Mars-Jones’s well-deserved place on any list of our best.’
— Alex Nurnberg, Sunday Times‘Mars-Jones’ trim, poignant novel humanizes the intricacies of a dominant-submissive gay relationship…. A relationship that could seem profoundly unfair blossoms into a revelation of love and magic.’
— Kirkus (starred)‘Mars-Jones colors Colin’s tender reminiscences with humor, sex, and tragedy. This is an indelible snapshot of 1970s English gay biker culture.’
— Publishers Weekly

‘I very much enjoyed Box Hill. It is a characteristic Mars-Jones mixture of the shocking, the endearing, the funny, and the sad, with an unforgettable narrator. The sociological detail is as ever acutely enduring.’
— Margaret Drabble

‘The biggest small book of the year.’
— Guardian

‘An exquisitely discomfiting tale of a submissive same-sex relationship ... perfectly realised.’
— Anthony Cummins, Observer

‘A tender exploration of the love that truly dare not speak its name – that between master and slave. On his eighteenth birthday, Colin literally stumbles upon a strapping biker twice his age, and falls into a long-term relationship characterised by devotion, mystery, and submission. In plain unadorned prose, Mars-Jones shows us the tender, everyday nature of this. Self-deprecating, sad, and wise.’
— Fiona McGregor

‘A subtle, biting novella ... Although repressed boomers of Surrey are probably not the target audience of this intimate, stirring novel, they would probably enjoy this portrait of an impossibly lost age.’
— Martin Chilton, Independent

‘A clever and subtle novel.’
— Max Liu, Financial Times

‘The very best novel of the year was Adam Mars-Jones’s complex, shifting and sensationally lewd Box Hill — for once in 2020 a novel written not to make an approved point or demonstrate its author’s virtue but to explore calmly the wildest stretches of human behaviour. Its subject is cruelty, both theatrically performed and executed in reality, without costumes. A masterpiece that Dame Ivy would have been greatly interested by.’
— Phillip Hensher, Spectator

‘Mars-Jones’s prose is exceptionally nimble, dry, humorously restrained, very English, with a little Nabokovian velvet too. He can describe more or less anything and make it interesting.’
— James Wood, The London Review of Books

From the Publisher