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  • An Imitation of Life

An Imitation of Life

Laura Solomon

English , 2013/04 Proverse Hong Kong

Tags: Literature

210 x 145 mm , 288pp ISBN / ISSN : 978-988-19935-5-7

  • US$22.00

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Celia is a grotesque, a giantess with progeria, a syndrome that makes her body age at three times the normal rate. Her horrified mother left her, newly-born, on the nearest doorstep. Let's not feel sorry for Celia, though. She is in part responsible for the devastation of her home town, Provencia (although the earthquake was not her fault). And she has been saved from a pitiable life by the gift of a camera. With this she documents the everyday lives of the town's-people as they pick their way through the wreckage that she has, to some extent, caused. Celia's singular story is told as she prepares a narrative for her final retrospective photographic exhibition which will be shown at last in the capital.

AN IMITATION OF LIFE takes the reader into a bizarre world where the extraordinary characters are lively distortions of people we may know. Aside from cockroach-eating Celia, Uncle Ed can "disappear" himself as well as objects in his magic show. Her adoptive parents Barry and Lettie together run the Butchette, a building created from the remains of Barry's Butchery and Lettie's Laundrette after the earthquake. Her two strong-minded grandmothers have useful nicknames. Grandma Lolly ran a sweet shop and Grandma Stuff is the widow of a taxidermist.

 

LAURA SOLOMON was Joint-Winner of the inaugural international Proverse Prize (2009) with her novella, Instant Messages, subsequently published by Proverse Hong Kong in 2010. Of her, Maggie Gee, when Chair of the Royal Society of Literature, United Kingdom, wrote, "Witty, clear-edged, both lemon-sharp and seductive, Laura Solomon is a writer to watch."

Born in New Zealand, Solomon spent nine years in London before returning to New Zealand in 2007. She has an honours degree in English Literature (Victoria University, 1997) and a Master degree in Computer Science (University of London, 2003).

She has published two novels in New Zealand, Black Light (1996) and Nothing Lasting (1997). Her short story collection Alternative Medicine was published in the UK in 2008 and An Imitation of Life was first published in the UK in 2009 by Solidus. Her first poetry collection, In Vitro, was published in 2011 by Headworx (New Zealand). Her plays have been produced at the Wellington (New Zealand) Fringe Festival and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (UK).

Among other writing prizes, she has twice won a prize in the Bridport (UK) International Short Story Competition.

Her short story, "Sprout", first published in the Bridport Anthology, 2004, and then by Flame Books in the UK, was translated into Czech by Olga Walló and appeared in krásná in the Czech Republic in 2011.

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